
Book-JH^ (o Z 



SPEECH 

HON. GABRETT DAVir"" 

OF KEIS'TUCKY, ' 



THE STATE OF THE UNION; #| 



WHICH HE GAVE A SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY 
OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



DELIVERED 

IJf THE SEMTE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
FEBRUARY 16 & 17, 18'^4. 




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VVASHINGTOK: 

L. TOWERS & CO., PRINTERg. 

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SPEECH 

OF 

HON. GAREETT DAVIS, OF KY, 

ON 

THE STATE OF THE UNION; 

IN WHICH HE GAVE A SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF 
MASSACHUSETTS. 



DELIVERED IN THE SEN'ATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRgARY 16 & 17, 1864. 



The Senate having under consideration the bill to equalize the pay of soldiers, Mr. DAVIS 
said: 

Mr. President: A great man ouce asked the question what a public man was 
worth who would not stand or fall by a great principle. I expand that question, 
and I ask, what is any man worth who will not stand or fall by a great principle? 
Sir, I have that amount of value at least. Some gentlemen on this floor in the' 
course of former debates have said truly that I was fond of recurring to the past. 
When I make a retrospect of the past, e.ven for only a few years, how great and melan- 
choly is the contrast with the present! Then we had p^ace, fraternity, unity, pros- 
perity, power, and the respect of the'nations of the world. That retrospect gives me 
a mournful pleasure. I love to dwell upon those halcyon times, times which I sin- 
cerely apprehend have left this country to return no more, at least so long as my- 
self, a much older man than you, and you, sir, [Mr. Howe in the chair,] shall be 
living, 

Mr. President, I have seen somewhere faction defined to be "the madness 
of the many for the benefit of the few." Parties are inherent, and indeed inevitable, 
in all popular Governments, and generally arise in all Governments. When par- 
ties are formed on diverse opinions of principles and measures of policj^, and their 
effects upon the Government and the country, and the differences of their probable 
effects are investigated and maintained with truth and candor, they are useful in 
forming a correct public opinion, in repressing maladministration, and in upholding 
liberty and the true spirit of the Government. But when these parties turn away 
from truth and reason, disregard fundamental principles, and support men not be- 
cause of their fitness for ofSce, their virtues, intelligence, and fidelity to public 
trusts and duty; and measures not because they are wise and just and promotive of 
the public good, but because they promise to subserve the ends, the ambition, 
and passions of individuals, or to attain or hold power, party then becomes faction. 

In the first and purer ages of most free Governments the people generally divide 
into parties, but the selfishness and arts of the leaders and the credulity of the 
masses soon cause them to degenerate into factions. Country then becomes absorbed 
by party, truth and reason bj^ falsehood and passion, and the public good and glory 
by partisan contests and triumphs. Then there is enacted the "madness of the many 
for the benefit of the few." The masses surrender their judgment, their will, and 
their conduct to their leaders, and become their followers and slaves, and ingore 
wholly the merits of men and measures. Party fealty, the esprit de corps of party, 
becomes the strongest bond among men, dominates their opinions, lives, and acts, 
and directs the destiny of the nation. Each succeeding faction becomes more venal, 
corrupt, and desperate than its predecessor, their conflicts becomes fiercer, the lig- 
aments of society are loosened, law and order are disregarded, private pursuits and 
industry are disturbed, property is seized upon by rapacious armed men, liberty and 
life become unsafe, and the people, growing weary and disgusted with the ever- 
recurring and never-ending tui-moil, for a modicum of tranquillity and security at 
length accept a despotism and a master. The positions here stated ai'e all proved 



by tBWBnccessive factions in ancient Rome, of Mariup, of Sjlla, of Pompey, Julius Cassar 
and Crassus, of Antonj', Lepidus, and Octaviua, and the natural and inevitable con- 
summation, the establishment of an imperial despotism by Octavius Ca?sar. Corrob- 
orative examples could be readily adduced from the history of many othes countries, 
ancient and modern, as ■well as the present deplorable condition of the United 
States; and the measures, purposes, and spirit of the parties North and South which 
now rule them, give mournful assurance that they too may add another and incom- 
parably the strongest of the numerous examples which the enemies of free institutions 
are so fond of citing, to prove that well ordered and permanent self-government is 
impossible to be achieved by any people. 

It seems to me that the decline of the great Republic has commenced in its earlj' 
immaturity, and has progressed and is progressing with a rapidity beyond all pre- 
cedent. 1 never indulged the dream that it could be immortal, perpetual; but I 
elung to the faith that it would have its periods of active youth, of vigorous man- 
hood, and sound old age; and that each period would be measured bj' centuries. It 
its destiny should be thus early to fall, it will not only be the most untimely but the 
noblest ruin that was ever mourned by mankind, blasting, beyond all comparison, 
for the present and through long-coming ages, more of the world's hope. 

I never for a moment doubted that the rebellion would'be suppressed, and when the 
news of tlie disastrous battle of Bull Run reached my town, and there struck down 
the spirit of every other Union man, I expressed to them my conviction that that 
reverse would arouse a spirit whichwould call out the entire resources of the loyal 
States; and although they might be more slow in being made available, they were 
so superior in force and endurance and all material wealth, that the rebels must be 
overwhelmed, and that consummation was only a question of time. I have held U> 
that opinion without ever having a moment of doubt. 

I came to the Senate soon after the President and the two Houses of Congress 
had with unprecedented unanimity declared to the people of the United Slates and 
to the world in the clearest language the principles and ends upon and for whicb 
the war against the rebels should be conducted. I put my trust and faith in those 
declarations and in the men who made them, and while they were observed I not 
only supported their war measures, but gave them personally my fullest confidence. 
But a new policy for conducting the war, and essentially different from that previ- 
ously announced by the President and by Congress, began to be evolved. The Presi- 
dent has since fully developed and is now fearfully executing it. "When he violated 
the many and distinct and emphatic pledges upon which and by which he was 
bound to conduct the war, for one, my confidence in him died to live no more. But 
what I consider to be the great perfidy of the President has not and never will 
cause me to hesitate to support the Government and the Union of these States in 
this civil war. I have voted for every measure to strengthen the executive arm that 
I deemed to be constitutional, and for some about which, both as to constitutional- 
ity and policy, I entertained serious doubts, and this because of the great stress of 
the country, and the desire of the Executive to have them enacted into laws, t 
shall continue this course of ofiicial conduct, not for the Piesident or the party in 
power, but for the Constitution which I liave sworn to support, for the restoration 
of the Union of the States, and for the common and permanent welfare of my 
country. 

It is this great civil war and its continuance that has brought the President to 
enormous abuses and usurpations of power, and the people to submit to them so 
passively. If the war could be closed speedily, they, too, would soon come to an 
end ; but so long as it continues, the only hope of their reformation is in the election 
of another President, and here arises a mighty motive with those in power and 
office, and in the receipt of large emoluments, for its continuance. It seems to me, 
too, that the rebels will rally all their energies for a decisive struggle in the coming 
campaign. I do not doubt that their great armies will be routed and driven from 
the field; the mass, however, will fight to extermination before they will submit 
to the humiliating terms that have been prescribed for them by the President. 
The rebel armies, unable to maintain great campaigns, will break up into small 
bodies, and from their swamps and mountain fastnesses will carry on a desolating 
partisan war for a longer period than Circassia did against Russia; and before it 
can be terminated by their subjugation, constitutional government and popular lib- 
erty throughout the United States may have perished, not for a time, but forever. I 
have never feared, nor have I now the least apprehension of the permanent over- 
throw of free institutions anywhere in the United States, by Jefferson Davis and 
his government; but I am beset by the gloomiest apprehensions that if Mr. Lincoin 
is re-elected, or some other nnnn having his principlep, policy, and scheme of govern- 



* . » 

ment should be hie successor, they will perish by him and his government, or by 
stronger men who will rise up and thrust them from their places. 

No men ever charged with the possession and administration of a free Govern- 
ment devised so bold and so extensive a scheme for its revolution, or were so prompt 
and successful in its execution, as the men who hold possession of the Government 
of the United States. The strong and fixed attachment of the loyal States to the 
Union; tiie general aversion of ihe people of the free States to slavery, and the 
fanatical and active hostility of a large sectional party to it ; the inauguration of 
the rebellion exclusively by slave States, and the absorbing devotion of large por- 
tions ol their people to their peculiar institution; the magnitude of the military 
poWer and resources which the rebels brought into the field to support their revolt 
and achieve their independence; the enormous armies, equipments, and supplies 
which the United States had to organize to meet successfully their formidable enemy ; 
and the fierceness with which the war has been waged on both sides, have given 
to ambitions men in power such an opportunity as never occurred before in any 
country to trample down the Coustitxition, laws, and liberties of the people, and to 
seize upon indefinite arbitrary power. Backed by a resistless military force rami- 
fied all over the loyal States, the assumptions of power by those in authority have 
been in proportion to the dimensions of the rebellion, and the people, confounded 
by the great and threatening danger to the Union and the extent and audacity ci 
those usurpations, have given but little heed to their Constitution, rights and liber- 
ties, thinking that when the terrific storm had passed they would resume their 
■wonted position, security, and vitality. Fatal delusion ! Those inappreciable bles- 
sings of Government, once yie^ed by a people, are generally lost forever; tliey are 
never regained except at the cost of countless sufferings and seas of blood. The 
duty that devolved upon the people in this great exigency required high intelli- 
gence, virtue, courage, and fortitude; it was at the same time to put dowH the re- 
bellion, and to hold all their agents, civil and military, strictly and firmly within 
the limits of rtieir constitutional and legal powers. Had that great duty been per- 
formed and the civil and military affairs of the country been wisely administered 
the rtbellion would ere this have been suppressed, the Union and peace restored, 
and our institutions strengthened and enshrined anew in the hearts of our' country- 
men and more strongly commended to the acceptance of mankind. The best thai 
can now be done is to occupy as much as possible of that safe anchorage. 

Political liberty in England was of Saxon birth. It fell temporarily by the victory 
of William the Conqueror at Hastings; but the Saxons, who were still muobi the 
larger portion of the people, were deeply imbued with its spirit. It soon burtt 
forth vigorously against the tyranny of the feudal system and the Normans, and 
made brave and unceasing conflict with the Plantagenete for their ancient rights; 
&.nd the sturdy barons, under the feeble John, achieved their reconquest from the 
throne. This contest between parliamentary privilege and popular liberty on the 
one side, and kingly prerogative on the other, was resumed and conticiued 
throughout the reigns of the succeeding Plantagenets and all the Tudora. The 
kings claimed the essential powers of Government, both executive and legisla- 
tive, as of their prerogative; the Commons of England asserted as of their 
privilege as the third estate, representing the people, that no laws could bo enact- 
ed or suspended without their concurrence, and that all the rights, privilege?, 
and liberties founded under their Saxon kings, and restored by Magna Ciiarta, were 
. the birthright of every Englishman, This great contest, extending through centu- 
I'ies, was taken up by Hampden and Cromwell and their heroic associates, and 
biought to a final issue in favor of the privileges of Parliament and the libertiea of 
the people in the reign of Charles I. They were defined more clearly and e«tab 
lished moi'e firmly by various acts of Parliament, passed in the reigr.B of Charles If, 
William of Orange, and at the accession of George I; and they have ever since 
been ae firmly moored in the British constitution and Government as the isle itself 
in its ocean bed. 

But in our free and limited Government of a written Constitution, Preaident 
Lincoln and his party, in utter disregard of its limitations and restrictions, are 
making for him as President claim to the same boundless and despotJo powerf, 
executive and legislative, which the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the first Stuarta 
contended for in England as appertaining to the kingly prerogative, through bo 
many generations of convulsive and bloody struggle, and which they ultimately 
lost, alter the longest, truest, most steady and heroic devotion to their rigbta and 
liberties by the people of England that is to be found in the history of m&nJdnd. 
Those inestimable right*, liberties, privilege^ and institatious, secured for«yer, it ia 
"0 be hop'.'d, to that p'r-ople by their appreciating eeE'=<', matly virtue^, «.^.'i i)i»iaci- 



ble fortitude, our ancestors brouglit with them to tbi3 contment',- tnd ihsf fonn J^'-t 
of our Government thought they had secured them to the people of the United 
States beyond all changes and chances, by setting them forth as fundamental prin- 
ciples in their written form of Government; and yet' the President has seized upon 
the opportunity of this great rebellion to subvert them for the time, and if he is- 
re-elected to the Presidency that subversion will become complete and final. His 
overthrow, or that of the Constitution and popular liberty, is ineviiable; and it is- 
yet in the power of the American people to decide this great iDsue in favor of Con- 
stitution and libertj', if they will throw off their lethargy and arouse themselves- 
to the most important work that has ever been intrusted to man. 

Mr. President, no Government could be organized in this enlightened age without 
adequate provisions for the protection of private property. It is one of the great 
ends for which society and all government are formed, and consequently it is one 
of the prominent objects that was attempted to be seeui'ed by the Constitution of 
the United States. The fifth article of the Amendments expresses the principle of 
the Constitution upon that point in clear and precise language. I will read it: 

" No person shall be held to aaavrer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a pre- 
sentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forcesy or in 
tbe militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be sub- 
.jwt for the same ofience to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any 
criminal case to be a wituesa against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without 
due process of law ; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compeajation." 

Mr. President, some gentlemen assume the most extraordinary and absurd posi- 
tion that negroes are not and cannot be the subject of property. Our Constitution 
recognizes property in slaves. The courts of the United States, which by the Con- 
stitution are expressly empowered to decide all cases arising under that instrument, 
uniformly and in numerous cases have recognized property in African slaves. There 
ifi not a civilized country of the earth, where this question ever arose, whose high 
judicial tribunals have not sustained the same position. Slavery and property in 
slaves have been upheld by the laws, usages, and practice of nations of the highest 
civilization from before the first dawn of history. This question has been made, 
not only^in the Supreme Court of the United States, but also repeatedly in the cir- 
cuit courts of the United States for Ohio and Michigan, and in one case at least the 
honorable Senator from Michigan [Mr. Howard] appeared as counsel The courts 
SMstained, not only the right of property in the owners of slayes, but also that 
■«'here they were fugitive, and escaped into other States, the owner or his agent 
could go into that State, and, against its express law to the contrarj', seize his 
slave and take him back; and if he was resisted by any persons to the loss of the 
BJave, or they aided the slave to escape, the owner could sue the persons interfering 
in the United States courts, and recover from them both the reasonable value of 
the slave and a penalty for their interference. The man who contends in the 
United States that African slaves are not and cannot be the subject of property is 
«a» compos mentis. 

In relation to this matter of property in slaves as connected with my own State, 
how does it stand? We have in Kentucky about, I will say in round n\imbers, 
two hundred and fifty thousand negro slaves. Before the commencement of this 
rebellion they were worth fi'SOO average at least. A colleague of mine in the other 
House, who is my near neighbor and among the largest owners of slaves in the 
Stale, estimates their value according to an appraisement which he has made of 
some that he placed upon a cotton farm in the South, men, women, and children,' 
.it $800 a head; but a moderate and reasonable estimate would be $G00 average. 
Two hundred and fifty thousand slaves at that rate would be worth $150,000,000. 
That is one-fourth part of the aggregate wealth of the State of Kentucky. What 
does this measure and the series of cognate measures in relation to the satne subject 
ontemplate? To deprive the people of the State of Kentucky of $150,000,000 of 
their property which is guarantied to them not only by their own constitution and 
laws,- but also by the Constitution of the United States and by all the decisions, 
both Federal and State, of all the courts in the United States, I believe, with one 
solitary exception in a State court of Wisconsin, and which has been properly re- 
versed by the revisory judgment of a United States court. Is it not a question of 
a good deal of magnitude to my constituency whether the President or Congress 
shall, directly or indirectly, deprive them of that amount of property without any 
compensation ? But, sir, the Congresss of the United States, nor the President, have 
not a particle of jurisdiction or power over the subject to the extent of liberating 
slaves. Neither has any military officer any more rightful authority to set free a 
e'.ave in the State of Kentucky than has the levy court of the county of Washington. 



Mr. WILKINSON rose. 

Mr. DAVIS. I would rather the Senator would reserve his questions until I get 
through, and then I will answer them with great pleasure ; but I prefer not to be 
interrupted. I say it most courteously to the I onorable Senator. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER, (Mr. Howe in the chair.) The Senator from Ken- 
tucky ie entitled to the floor. 

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. President, we have a peculiar and unique Government. W,e 
have a Government established by a written Constitution. That Constitution is the 
law of our Government, and limits all its power and authority. It has been deci- 
ded again and again by the Supreme Court, and it is the plainest dictate of reason 
and common intelligence, much less of legal learning, that the Government of the 
United States cannot claim, or exercise without usurpation, a solitary power that is 
not conferred upon it by that sole law of its creation. The Constitution was formed 
by separate, distinct, and independent political sovereignties, each one of those 
sovereignties within its own limits and jurisdiction being clothed with all political 
power. They saw the necessity of a common national Government, and conse- 
quently of a surrender of some of the highest powers of political sovereignty to 
that national Government for the purpose of .securing the welfare of the whole 
people of the United States. This surrender of power was almost mainly of the 
sharacter of those that appertain to the foreign relations of the States or their re- 
lations with each other. It is one of the essential features of the system that jthe 
dome*iic institutions, laws, and p9lity of each State were not surrendered to the 
General Government, but were retained almost wholly and exclusively by the 
States. 

Now, Mr. President, in the face of the guaranties in the Constitution whJcti 1 
have read, that private property shall not be taken except for public use, and by 
judgment of law and upon compensation being made to the owner, how can the 
Government of the United States, in any of its departments, seize and appropriate 
private property for any other object than public use, public appropriation, public 
application of the property to some purpose and action of Government? And when 
it takes private property, even for such ends, how can it presume to take that 
property, in the face of this provision of the Constitution, without making, or in- 
tending to make, competisation to the owners for it? 

Mr. President, an error is committed very often in this day, and I think it is for 
the want of a recurrence to and an examination of the essays and explanations of 
and that were contemporaneous with the Constitution. Gentlemen attempt to ana- 
lyze, to define, to enlarge the powers of our Government by comparing it with 
other Governments. As 1 said before, our Government is unique. It is formed bj' a 
written instrument. That instrument speaks for itself. It was formtd upon the gen- 
eral principle of not giving plenary powers to the national Government, but only such 
as should be delegated to it by the States, and not to be obligatory upoa any State 
that did not ratify it. This principle has been often announced by the Supreme 
Court, that only such powers are vested in the General Government as are expi'esfly 
delegated by the language of the Constitution itself or by the necessary, reasona- 
ble, and proper implication of that language. A leading feature of the Govern- 
ment is that all the powers vested in the President by the Constitution are enu- 
merated in the second and third sections of the second article; and he is not clothed 
with a solitary incidental power, but the whole of that unnumbered and indefinite 
:las8 of powers are vested by the express and unequivocal language of the Go.isti- 
tution itself in Congress, and that only to the extent that they are necessary' ahd 
proper to enable Congress, or the President, or the judiciary, or any other d'd{y&!ft- 
nient or officer of the Government to execute the powers with which they atti ex- 
pressly clothed. Congress may assume and exercise itself at pleasure any of th6«(iinfta- 
dental powers, but the President or any other officer not one of them until aUtnbr- 
Jzed by a law of Congress. This Government of limited authority is also by eiprees 
pfoVisions restricted or forbid to exercise sundry enumerated powers; and theirfe'is) 
also a direct provision that the express restriction of any powers to the General 
Government shall have no effect whatever to grant it any additional powehi of to 
enlarge those that are vested by the Constitution. 

Sir, what is another general principle of our Government? That all the pttirfera 
of Government established by the language of the Constitution are expressly iA the 
main parted and divided among three departments, and the powers that at* to b« 
exercised by'each are expressly enumerated. . Then when a question arises aS to the 
^^ncral proposition of the extent of the powers of the Federal Government, or "of 
their investiture in what department or officer, there is but one rule of confitnic- 
tion, end that rule is the langnaje of the Constitution itself, and the coB'iltioa of 



8 

tbe c&untry and public afFaira wben it was a(5opte(.T. There is no oth^r systeiB of 
govercment under the sua that can enlighten legislators or the President or courts 
upon such q,uestion3. You may resort to the British Government as it then existed, 
and the writings of publicists when the Constitution was adopted, to ascertain the 
lueaiiing, import, and force of terms of art or political science that are introdneed 
into the Constitution, but beyond that you cannot have reference to any Govern- 
ment, not for the purpose of illustrating or ascertaining what are the powers 
.of the Government of tlie United States, or in what departments and magistracies 
they may be deposited, but oq these questions you have 'So look to the ConstitutioB 
alone. 

Sir, in construing the Holy Scripture you might as well recur to the Koran, to 
tlie Puranas of the Hindoos, to the system of Zoroaster, to th^ moral precepts 
taught by Confucius or Seneca or any other great heathen moralist, with as much 
propriety as yon may resort to other systems of government to determine and ' 
ascertain what are the powers and what are th? depositories of the powers of our 
Government. Our Constitution is our political Bible, and as such is as much dis- 
tinct and isolated from the constitutions and governments of all other countries as 
tlie Christian's Bible is from all other systems of religion. 

Then, sir, I come to this other caVdinal principle, which I lay down as an incon- 
trovertible axiom, that wherever the Constitution of the United States- by express 
language establishes and vests a power of government, or guaranties a right, liberty, 
or^rivilege to the citizen, such provision of the Constitution cannot be eiispended 
or abrogated, restricted or impaired in its operation by any implication arising 
from any other of the provisions of the Constitution. I also state this further prin- 
iCiple as axiomatic: that the amendments to the Constitution being the last expressed 
■will of the people upon the subject of their Government, like amendments to all 
laws and constitutions, if there be any conflict express or by implication between 
the original text and the amendments, the amendments are to prevail, and are to 
give the supreme and the undoubted law upon the controverted point. Then, sir, 
I recur to the Constitution and read the provision guarantying the rights of private 
property in the most explicit language — one of the cardinal ends for which this and 
all other legitimate Government was created, without which express guarantee of 
property and other inalienable rights and liberties the people of the United States 
v/ere not satisfied in the first instance with the Constitution ; and I assert that there 
ai'e no other express provisions overruling them, or conflicting to any extent with 
them: and that they cannot be nullified, restricted, or affected by any possible 
implications springing out of the other provisions of the Constitution, or out of the 
whole of it. Sir, that position in truth and in sound logic ends the controversy. 
When I read these guarantees of private property, and the emphatic declaration 
that it shall be taken but for public uses, and then only on just compensation 
being made, there is an end to the question of the right of the citizen to have a 
fair price for his property wheie it is taken for public use. The argument cannot 
. be answered. 

Now, sir, what does this joint resolution propose to do? It proposes to take 
olave property without making any compensation to the owners: and here let nie 
examine the question: What is just compensation for private property? Has the 
Government of the United States, or any of its authorities or officers, civil or mili- 
tary, the right to wrest a man's property from him without he receiving compen- 
iation for it at the time, or within a reasonable period thereafter? I answer, no. 
If a military officer says that he takes it for the public service, and because the 
erigencies of that service require him to take it, and that is all he says or does or 
i'l authorized to do by his Government in relation to making just compensation for 
property, and there are no means of making compensation by law, I ask does that 
•fttisfy in any sense the requisitions of the Constitution? 

The constitutions of the different States have similar provisions in relation to 
taking private property for public use. The constitution of my own State has a 
provision almost iu the same words, and I believe that most of tjie State constitu- 
tions have a similar provision. What have been the adjudications of the supreme 
court of the State of Kentucky iu relation to that provision? The extreme point 
•which they have ruled in relation to the power of the Government in its favor is, 
that there must be laws in force and effect authorizing the levy of money upon the 
. State for the purpose of making this compensation; and these laws must be executed 
by the proper court assessing so much money as will be sufficient to pay a fair and 
reasonable price for the property that is so taken ; and they have decided in explicit 
terms that any state of case or of law short of such a provision as that does not 
satisfy the requirements of the Constitation. The legal consequence is, that the 



9 

talting of property, even for public use, under any other state of case, would be & 
wrong to the owner; and the officer so taking it could be sued and held liable as a 
trespasser. 

Is not that proposition obvious to every man of good sense? Shall the Govern- 
ment any more than an individual, in the exercise, if you please, of its high power 
of sovereignty, take private property without making or offering to make or hav- 
ing made any provision whatever for its fair value to the owner? Yet such is the 
practice and the constant practice of 6ur Government. It is in derogation of the 
Constitution and the rights of property guarantied to the «itiaen. Th^-. question 
jnight well arise when the property was taken from the citizen if compensation 
therefor should not then and there be made. But until th-ere are laws which au- 
thorize th,e valuation of the property and the assessment of money to pay the owner 
for it, there is not a pretense that the guarantee of the Constitution has been sat- 
isfied. 

Here is another violation of this principle by the course of the Government in 
the practices of its military officers. What power has a United States agent, civil 
oi- military, to take private property and to place his own value upon it? What 
right has a recruiting officer, or the Stcretarj' of War, or the President, to enlist a 
negro man and to assess $300 as his value, if any be assessed, wlien, if his time and 
service were assured to his owner or the hirer from that owner, he would be worth 
from two to three hvindred dollars a year? What right has the Government of the 
United States, or any of its agents, to seize any property, wliatever, that is necen- 
eary for the uses of the Army, or for any other branch of the public servioe, and 
nrbitrarily to assess their own value upon it? There is but one mode in which 
that can be properly and legally done; and that is for disinterested comraissioners 
or appraisers to be selected by authority of law, to ascertain the fair a>nd reasonable 
value of the property, whatever it may be ; and for the United States to have a 
•course of proceedings ready provided for by law, and to put them in course of ex- 
ecution, for making to the owner of the property the fair compens'Uion for it at 
the time that lie is deprived of its possession. Sir, a Government that acts upon a 
different principle is oppressive, is tyrannical; it violates flagrantly the requisitions 
of the Constitution and tlie rights of the citizen; It does not an«wer the purposes 
and ends for which the people organized their Government. They never intended 
or formed their Government to wrong and oppress them; and the highest obliga- 
tion of its officials is to be just to the people. 

But, Mr. President, a great deal is claimed in this day of insurrection and civil 
war under the pretext "militarj' neeessitj-," Sir, I deny that there is any such 
power as that in our Government that will sanction the enormous abuses of power 
that have^been perpetrated during this war. That question was up before the Su- 
preme Coui't in the case of Mitchell vs. Harmony — a case that arose during the 
Mexican war. I will read' from 1.3 Howard's Reports a paae or two of the opinion 
that will give the general facts of the case, and the principles that arose and were 
decided in it: * 

" He (tiie defendant) iustified ihe seizure on several groundsi 

"1. Tbat tlie plaiEliff was engaged in trading witli the enemy. 

'■•% Tbat he was compelled to remain with the Americnn forces, and to move with them, to 
[prevent tlie property from taliing into the hands of the enemy. 
j" B. TIrat the property wa« taken for public use. 

'■'4. That if the defendant was liable for the original taking he was released from damages for 
its subsf<juent loss by the act of the plaintiff, who had resurued the possession and control of it 
before the loss h«i)pened. 

"5. That the defendant acted in obedience to the order of his commanding officer, and therefore 
s« ip.ot liable. 

"The first ob,jeetion was overruled by the court, and we think correctly." 

The opinion then goes on to the second and third objections, which contain the 
material parts of the opinion, as they bear on the principles decided in the ease :' 

*'The second and third abjections will be considered together, as they depend on the same prin- 
eiples. Upnrn these two grounds of defense the circuit court instructed the jury that the defendant 
might lawS'Utly t»ke posseesioii "f tiie goods of the plaintiff, to prevent them from falliag into thn 
hands ef the jmblic enemy; but in order to justify the seizure the danger must be immediate and 
impending, and not remote or contingent. And that he might also take them for public use and 
impress them into the public service, in ease of an immediate and pressing danger or urgent ne- 
cessity existing at the time, but not otherwise. 

" In the argument of these two points, the cireumstanoes under which the goods of the plaiutifi 
were taken have been much discussed, and the evidence examined for the purpose of showing the 
nature and character of the danger which actually existed at the lime or was apprehended by the 
commander of the American forces But this question is not before us. It is a question of fact 
upon which the jury have passed, and their verdict has decided that a danger or necessity such as 
the court described did not exist when the property of the plaintiff was taken by the defendant. 
AaA Uie only subject Sor inquiry in lids court ia, wbefher the law was correctly stated iu the in- 



10 

struction of the court; and whether anything short of an immediate and impendingr danger from 
the public enemy or an urgent necessity for the public service can justify the taking of private 
property by a military commamler to prevent it from falling into the bands of the enemy, or for 
the purpose of converting it to the use of the enemy. 

"The instruction is objected to on the ground that it restricts the power of the officer withic 
narrower limits than the law will justify; and that Avhen the troops are employed in an expeiliiioa 
into the enemy's country, where the danger that meets them cannot always be foreseen, and where 
they are cut oif from aid of their own Government, the commanding officer must nejessarily be 
iatrusted with some discretionary power as to the measures he should adopt; and if he acts hon- 
estly and to the best of his judgment, the law will project him. But it must be remembered that 
the question here is not as to ihe discretion he may exercise in his military operations or in rela- 
tion to those who are under Uis command His distance from home, and the duties in which he is 
engaged, cannot enlarge his power over the property of a citizen, nor give to him in that respect 
any authority which he would not under similar circumstances jiossess at home. And where the 
owner has done nothing to forfeit his rights, every public officer is bound to respect them, whether 
he finds the property in a foreign or hostile country or in his own. , 

" There are, without doubt, occasions in which private property may lawfully be takenpossession 
of or destroyed to prevent it from falling into the hands of the public enemy; and also where a 
military officer, charged with a particular duty, may impress private pro]>erty into the public ser- 
vice, or talce it for public use. Unquestionably, in such cases, the Government is bound to make 
full compensation to the owner; but the officer is not a trespasser. 

" But we are clearly of opinion that in all these cases the danger must be imnaediate and im- 
pending, or the necessity urgent for the public service, such as will not admit of delay, and where 
'he action of the cLj'il authority would be too late in pfoviding the means which the occasion callj 
for. It is impossiBie to define the particular circumstances of danger or necessity In whid) this 
power may b" lawfully exercised. Every case must depend nii its own circum^tances It U 
the emergency that gives the rifjht, and the emergency must- be shown to exist before the takin;; 
can be justified.'' 

It goes on then farther to state that if the coramandpr of the expedition himself, 
General Doniphan, who gave the order, had been there doing the act of taking 
possession of the property, iie himself would not have been justified but would 
iiave been a trespasser, and that the order of a superior to an inferior to do an 
illegal act still leaves that act, though performed in obedience to positive orders, a 
trespass, and the subordinate is responsible for it as a trespa.«8er. But the two 
main principles decided are these: first, private property cannot be seized by a 
military man unless the danger that creates this necessity be so immediate and iw.- 
pending, the case so urgent, that it cannot wait for the action of the civil authori- 
ties; second, where the urgency and necessitj' is of that character that cannot 
await, still, if the property is seized, it is in everj' instance upon the condition 
that the Government is bound to make reasonable and just conipensation for it to 
the owner. 

Now, sir, these are the two principles which this case establishes; and they are 
as favorable to the Government and its agents as the provisions of the Constitution 
can authorize any enlightened court to lay down. They go to the verj' verge that 
can be claimed by any military cotnmander whatever, even the Commander in-Chief. 

But,' sir, if that case of urgent, impending necessity that cannot wait the action 
of the civil authorities be upon an officer, although he may justify himself against 
an action of trespass, yet in establishing such a case of necessity, it to no extent 
exempts the United States from their liability to make compensatioa for the 
property. 

Now, sir, the amendments which I propose to offer, if the joint resolution shall 
assume a shape to make it in order, contemplate two or three movements upon the 
part of our Government: fii'st, that so far as negroes free or slave are soldiers they 
shall be disbanded and disarmed; that as many of them as are necessary in th^ 
service of the United States as teamsters or laborers may be so retained by the 
order of the President, but they are to be retained as private property, and com- 
manders of the regiments to which they are attached in the service are to give a 
certificate of their employment in the service of the United States, and their own- 
ers are to be entitled quarter!}' to a reasonable compensation for their services. 

Sir, it would be the wisest policy that this Government could adopt to accept the 
first branch of my proposition. Tliose negroes should never liave been enrolled as- 
a part of the Army of the United States. It was a great and a fatal mistake. The 
best that now can be done is to retrace tliat erroneous step as rapidly as we can. 
Sir, thisrebellion has been strengthened to an incalculable degree by the employ- 
ment of BCgro soldiers. The policy, the system upon which the war has been con- 
ducted, has had vo other effect than to unite and knit together the southei'n people 
firmly, indissolubi}' almost, and to call forth their utmost fo^rce and resources to the 
Kupport of their rebellion. It has alarmed and deeply dissatisfied the loyal popu- 
lation- of the border slave States, been a grievous injustice and oppression to that 
class of population in the rebel States, and caused everywhere oppressive measures 
that have produced wide-spread discontent in all the loyal States. 

Sir, there was not a power necessary to have eriabled the Gov&rnmeat ta subdue, 



11 

in-ai-eaGon-able time, tbis rebellion, that could not have been properly conferred 
upon it by constitutional legislation, and that would not have been literally in con- 
formity to the Crittenden resolution and of the Pre&ident's pledges in relation to 
the war. 

But, eir, if the error, and, in ray judgment, the fatal error, in enrolling negro 
soldiers is not to'be retraced, we theii come to that impregnable constitutional pro- 
vision that private property whether a slave or any other class of property, cannot 
be taken for the use of the Government without making the owner fair, just, and 
reasonable compensation. If the Senate should be indisposed to accept my first 
proposition, it ought at kast to^take the second. If it is resolved to have the mili- 
tary services of the negro, it must, in obedience to all the decisions of the Supreme 
Court, reoognize the negro, where he is a slave, as property-, and it must, in obedi- 
ence to those decisions, as well as to the express provision of the Constitution, make 
provision for the payment of his fair value to the owner. 

Mr. PresidcEt, I will add oec other word in connection with this branch of the 
subject. There are som-3 gentlemen in this Chamber who were invited with other 
gentlemen, including myself, from the border slave States, to meet the President in 
■consultation s<Dme two years ago in relation to slavery in the border States. On that 
occasion the President renewed hia pledges, in the most explicit and clear language, 
that it was not his purpose to interfere with slavery in the Slates. He then admitted, 
in the most plain and distir.ct terras, that there were the same constitutional and le- 
gal guarantees to the owner of that property as to the owner of any other class of 
property. As I have stated before once or twice on this floor, he put this pointed 
case. " I," said the .President, "earn §;i,O00, and I invest that money in land; 
another individual earns .$i,000 and invests it in a negro slave; he has as inde- 
feasable a right to his slave as I have to myland." 

He added lurtheriEore, " I am not yet prepared to break with Greely and com- 
pany." A gentleman from Maryland sugge.<?ted to him that the rights of the owners 
•of that description of property were already being threatened to be infringed in 
that State. He then with em'olion asseverated, "If I live until the 4tJi of March, 
1865, I will remain President of the United States, and this property shall be pro- 
tected in Maryland." A gentleman from that State then suggested to the President 
that the effect and substance of the conference between him and the gentlemen 
present should be reduced to writing. The President warmed up somewhat, and 
with some earsaestness directed this question to that gentleman, " Do you see any 
of the snake in me?" I then thought that he had none of the snake in him, but 
how I have changed my opinion since! He was then dissembling; he has prac- 
ticed th« obliquity and crawling, stealthy movement of the snake towards its object 
upon th« whole of the institution of slavery, though he then made professions so 
different to the gentlemen who surrounded him. 

But, Mr. President, I have some authority here on the subject of property in 
slaves that 1 beg leave to lay before the Senate. Both the members from Massa- 
chusetts assum« auda<!iously that there is not and cannot be property in negroes 
because th<;y are human beings. Sir. Massachusetts herself has a history upon this 
subject, and I will read a little from that histoiy. Lgt us see how Massachusetts 
used to think and to act and to trade and to legislate upon the subject of negro 
slavery and property in slaves. I ask those gentlemen when and -where and by 
whom was negro slavery established in the American colonies — who but by Massa- 
chusetts herself? What does her history answer on these points of inquiry? A 
day of recent celebration of the sodality of "the New England Societies" at several 
points was signalized by this missile : 

• 

" The New England Society in the eily of JT**w York to the New Kngland Society in Montreal , 
greeting: Thanks for your g<-neroii8 wishes. We shall not cease to labor for their complete fulflll- 
ment; and by the blessintr of God, and our utill victorious arms, we mean in our next aoniver 
e.iry, i)i (ill the Stafeii.from Maine to California, to celebrat-e the national jubilee in honor of the 
«ternal principles of lihertij under tloe law, which the Pilgrims, emerging fio:u the cabin of the 
Mayflower, laid down as the corner stone of the nation." 

This promised glorification is not to be for the restored union of the States, the 
vindicated authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the 
return of peace and good will to a turn and warring people, but for th^ violent and 
revolutionary overthrow of slavery in all the slave States, in disregard of constitu- 
tional guarantees and the sanction and protection of laws, by the victorious armies 
of the United States. I suppose that this grandiloquent piece of fustian and false- 
hood is the emanation of some half crazed Massachusetts brain. Never was there 
a more impudent pharisaism uttered than that the eternal principles of liberty xmder 
the law were kid down as the comer-stone of the nation by the JPilgrims emerging 



12 

\ 

from the cabin of the Mayflower. The persecutions of Roger "Williania and his 
Anabaptist associates, and the cropping of the Friends, the burning of witches, the 
most vexatious and tyrannical body of laws and regulations extending to the 
minutiae of private and domestic life, and the long, habitual, and continuing disre- 
gard by Massachusetts of constitutions, laws, aud treaties, all proclaim it to be 
untrue. Her early establishment by law of negro slavery, her enactment of the 
iirst and a vigorous fugitive slave law and slave code, declare its bold untruth. 

The Mayflower ia/nded her Pilgrims- on Plymouth rock in 1620; aud th-e Massa- 
chusetts Legislature, called "the General Court," in 1641, established this law: 

" It is ordered by this court, and the authority thereof, tbattbere shall never be aay bond s)avery . 
Villainage, or captivity araoag us, unleiis it be Imofnl captivee taken in just-wars, as willingly sell 
theniselven or are nold to us, and such shall have the liberties and Christian usages which the law 
of God established in Israel concerning such persons doth mortally require ; Provided, This ex- 
empts none from servitude who shall be adjudged thereto by authorKy." 

On the 5th of September, 1672, "Articles of Confederation of the New England 
Colonies" were ordained at Plymouth. Section seven provides:. 

"It is also agreed if any aerrar.t ruTv .iv/ay frnm his- master into any other of these confederated 
jurisdictions, that in such cas«, upon the certificate of one magistrate in tlie jurisdiction out of 
which said servant fled, or upon other due proof, the said servant shall be delivered to his master 
or any other that pursues and brings such certificate or proofs 

Here was the first fugitive slave law of North America. 

In 1683, the General Court passed a lav/ concerning the right of men to sell 
themselves for debt; and providing that the court of the county should regulate- 
the time of service, so that other creditors "should not be deprived of their fair 
share of the ijnaiis lifetime." As early as 16"& the General Court had declared that 
no "covenant servant in household with any other should hold office or vote." 

In 16S6, Massachusetts passed a law in relation to "covenant servants," the first 
section of ■which is : 

" It is ordered that n-o servant shall bo set free or have any lot until he have served out the time- 
covenanted, under penalty of such fine as the quprter's court shall inflict, unless they see cause tc 
remit the same." 

This provision continued to be her law for upward of a century. 
In June, 170;;. she passed this law, froni which it appears there were mulattoes 
in the land of the Pilgrim Fathers at a very early day as well as- negro slaves:. 

An act relating to mulatto and negro slaves. 

"Whereas great charge and inconveniences have arisen to divers towns and places by the releas- 
ing and setting at liberty mulatto and negro slaves: For prevention whereof for the future. 

Be it declared and enacted by his EKceUencij the Oovernar, Coinhcil, and, Representaiives, in 
General Court assembled, and by the authority of the saine. That no mulatto or negro slave shali 
hereafter be manumitted, discharged, or set free, until sufficient security he, given, to the treasurer 
of the town or idace where sudi person dwells, in a valuable sum, not less than tiftr p.mnds, to 
secure and indemnify the town or place from all charge for or about such rau'latto or negro, to be 
manumitted and set at liberty, in case he or she by sickness, lameness-, or otherwise, be rendere<^ 
incapable to support him or herself 

And no mulatto or negro hereafter manumitted shall be deemed or aeeounted free, for whom se- 
curity shall not be given as aforesaid, but shall be the proper charge of their respective masters or 
mistresses, in case they stand in need of relief and support, iKitwithstanding any manumission or- 
;QStrument of freedom to them made or given ; and shall also be liable at all times to be pat forth 
to service by the seieclmen of the town. 

"We adopted that law in Kentucky pretty much in the same language pjnd having 
essentially the same meaning 

In October of the same year Massachusetts passed this othej' law: 

An act to prevent disorders in- the Bight. 

Wliereas great disorders, insolences, and burglaries are ofltimes raised and committed' fa the 
night time by Indians, nesrro and mulatto servants and slaves, to the disquiet and hurt of her Ma- 
jesty's good subjects: For the prevention thereof, 

Be it enacted by his Excellenerii the Gfyremor, C&mteil, and Kepresentafivea, in general covert 
assemhlid, and by the authority of the same. That no Indian, negro or nvulatto servant or slave, 
may presume to be absent from the families whereto they respectively behmg, or be found abroad 
in the night time after nine o'clock, unless it be upon some errand fijr their respective masters or 
owners. And iill justices of the peace, constables, tilhingmen, watchmen, .and othe? her Majesty's 
good subjects, being householders within the same town, are hereby respectively empowered to 
take up and apprehend, or cause to be apprehended any Indian, negro or mulatto servant or >lave 
that shall be found abroad after nine o'clock at eight, and shall not give a good and satisfactory 
account of their business, make any disturbances or otherwise misbehave themselves, and forth- 
with convey them before the next justice of the i>eace, if it be not over late in the night, or to re- 
strairi them in the common prison, watch-liouje, or constable's house until the morning, and then 
cause them to appear befor« a justice of the peace, who shall order them to the house of correc- 
tion to receive the discipline of the house, and then be dismissed; unless *hey be charged with 
any other offence than absence from the fam.iiiea whereto they respecti.vely belong.. wilUoat leavt 



13 

from their respective masters or owners ; and in such towns where there is no house of correction 
to be openly whipped by the constable, not exceeding ten stripes. 

In 1718 she passed a law to punish any master of a vessel who should receive on 
board a hired servant without permission of his master, and making him also liable 
in damages to the "master or owner." Within twenty years after the landing of 
the Mayflower the Pilgrim Fathers passed a law of which section three reads: 

"Seo. 3. It is also ordered that when any servants shall run away from their masters" * * * 
•'it shall be lawful for the next magistrate, cr the constable arid two of the chief inhabitants, 
where no magistrate is, to press men and boats or pinnaces at the public charge to pursue such 
persons by sea and land, and bring them back by force of arms." 

Such are the laws and usages of Massachusetts, which established, regulated, and 
gave security to ,«Iave propertj', and that seem to have been the models upon which 
the more southern slaveholding colonies fashioned their laws in relation to the same 
subject. But the Massachusetts system was the more atrocious in several features: 
it comprehended white men, Indians, negroes, and mulattoes. The title of the 
masters was by importation from fceign countries, captivity in war, and purchase. 
It established a servitude by the sale of himself of the white man, and forbade hia 
enfranchisement by his master until his term had expired. It enacted an effective 
fugitive slave law for. the white man, Indian, mulatto, and negro, servant and slave; 
and when they eloped from their "owners and masters,'" authorized their pursuit 
at the public charge, and upon a simple official certificate of their being slaves or 
servants, and directed them to be returned to their slavery or servitude. It required 
not the testiinont/ of two witnesses, and no smorn evidence whatever upon the point. 
It allowed no trial or examination before court or commissioner, no writ of habeas 
'-'orpits, and no bail nor writ of replevin for the pursued fugitive ; but its stern judg- 
ment was that he should go back into his former servitude or slavery. It punished 
the servant or slave, whether white, Indian, negro, or mulatto, male or female, with 
stripes, to be inflicted at the house of correction or publicl}', for disorderly conduct 
or being from home after nine o'clock at night, unless on some special errand. 

But, Mr. President, I now proceed to some of the minutic of Massachusetts 
slavery, as established by her early history. I quote from the Historical Magazine ; 

"Hugh Peter writes to John Winthrop from Salem (in 1637)" — 

only seventeen years after the landing of the Mayflower — 

" Mr. Endecot an^l my selfe salute you in the Lord Jesus, &c. "Wee have heard of a divi- 
dence of women and children in the bay, and would be glad of a share, viz: a young woman 
or girle aud a boy if you thinke good I wrote to you for some boyes lor Bermudas, which I 
Uiink is considerable " (M H. S. CoU-., IV, vi, 95 

In this application of Hugh Peter we have a glimpse of the beginning of the colonial slave trade. 

He wanted '-some boyes for the Kerraudas," which he thought was "considerable." 

It would seem to indicate that this itisposition of captive Indian boys was in accordance with 
custom and previous practice of the authorities. At any rate, it is certain that in the Pequod war 
they took many prisoners ^^ome of those who had been " disposed of to particular persons in 
the country," (Winthrop, I, 233,) ran away, and being brought in again were " branded on the 
sh-mlder." (lb) 

In May, 1637, Winthrop says: 

" We had now slain and taken, in all, about seven hundred. We sent fifteen of the boys and 
two women to Bermuda by Mr Peirce; but he, missing it, carried them to Providence Isle." 
(.Winthrop, I, 234.) 

The learned editor of Winthrop's Journal, referring to the Tact that this vroceeding in that 
day was probably justified by reference to the practice or institution of the Jews, very quaintly 
observes, '• Yet that cruel people never sent prisoners so far." . (lb., note.) 

A subsequent entry in "Winthrop's Journal gives us another glimpse of the subject, Decem- 
ber 26, 1637 : 

"Mr. Peirce. in the Salem ship, the Desire, returned from the West Indies after seven 
months. He bad been at Providence, and brought some cotton, and tobacco, and negroes, &c., 
trom thence, and salt from Tertngos." (Ii>., 254.) 

Winthrop adds to this account that "dry flsh and strong liquors are the only commodities 
for those parts. He met there two m^n-of-war, sent forth by the lords, &c., of Providence with 
letters of mart, who had taken divers prizes from the Spaniard ami many negroes." Long 
afterwards Dr. Belknap said of th» slave trade that the rum distilled in Massachusetts was 
••the mainspring of this Irafflck." (M. H S Coll., I, iv, 197 ) 

Josselyn says, "That they seat the male children of the Pequots to the Bermudas." (2o8 M. 
H. S. Coll, IV, iii, 360.) 

In the Pequot war, some of the Narrao;ansetts joined the English in its prosecution, and re- 
ceived a part of the prisoners as slaves, for their services Miantunnomoh received^ eighty 
IJiiiigrct was to have twenty. (Drake, 122, 146 Mather's Relation, quoted by Drake, 39. See 
also Hartford Treaty, September 21, 1638, in Drake, 125.) 

Captain Stonghton, who assisted in the work of exterminating the I'cquots, after his arrival 
i.n tlie enemy's country, wrote to the Governor of Ai assachusetts [Winthrop] as follows: "By 
this pinnace, you shall receive forty-eight or fifty women and children" * * « * 
•• Concerning which, there is one I formerly mentioned that is the fairest and largest that I 
saw amongst them, to whom I have given a coate to clothe her. ll is my desire to have her 
♦ for a servant, if it may stand with your good liking, else not." 



14 

I recion that would have been the desire of the two Senators from Massaehnsetts 
if they had been tliere, especiallj- of the gentleman who stands at the head of the 
Military Committee. 

"There is a little squaw that Steward Culacut desireth, to whom lie hath giveu a coate. Lieuf 
Davenport also destreth one, to wit, a small one, that hath three strokes upon her stomach, thus : 
— Ill -1-. He desireth her, if it will stand with your liking. Sosonion , the Indian, desireth a 
young little squaw, which I know not." (MS. Letter in Mass. Archives, quoied by Drake, 171.) 

Probably if he had known her Sosomon would not have had the privilege of 
getting her. 

An early traveler in New England has preserved for us the record of one of the earliest, if not' 
indeed, ihe very first attempt at breeding of slaves in America. The following passage from Jos- 
selyn's Account of Two Vnyages to New England, jiublished at London in 1664, will explain itseU. 

"The second of October, [1639,] about 9 of the clock in the morning, Mr. Maverick's Negro 
woman came to my chamber window, and in her own Countrey language and tune sang very loud 
and shrill ; going out to her. she used a great deal of respect towards me, and willingly would 
have expressed her grief in English; but I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment , 
whereupon I repaired to my host, to learn of him the cause, and resolved to intreat him in her be- 
half, for that I understood before, that she had been a Queen in her own Countrey, and observed a 
very humble and dutiful garb used towards her by another Negro who was her maid." 

You see the term "negro" was used in that day. This fashionable shilly-shally 
language of "colored persons" and "descendant of Africa" was rather too circum- 
locutory, [laughter,] and they come out with the plain and direct term of "negro." 

" Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a breed of Negroes, ami therefore seeing she would not 
yield by persuasions to company with a Negro young man he had in his house ; he commanded 
him wiird she nill'd she to go to bed to her, which was no sooner done but she kickt him out again, 
ihis she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, and this was the cause of her grief." (Josaelyn, 

What a nice specimen of a Puritan "consecrated to human liberty" have we here! 

Emanuel Downing, a lawyer of the Inner Temple, London, who married Lucy Winthrop, sister 
of the older Winthrop, came over to New England in 1633 The editors of the Winthrop Papers 
say of him, " There were few more active or efBcient friends of the Massachusetts Colony during 
its earliest and most critical period." His son was the famous Sir George Downing, English Em- 
bassador at the Hague. 

In a letter to his brother-in-law, " probably written during the summer of 1645," is a most lumin- 
ous illusiration of the views of that day and generation on the subject of human slavery. He says ; 

"A warr with the Narragansett is verie considerable to this plantation, for I doubt whither yt be 
not synne in vs, hauing power in our hands, to fuffer them to maynteyne the worship of the devil" — 

Massachusetts like. They wanted slaves then, and in order to make slaves of the 
Narragansetts, fanatical-like they took up the idea that they would make war be- 
cause the Narragansetts worshipped the devil. I think Massachusetts has been 
guilty of a good deal of that sort of worship since. But to continue this extract: 

"' which their paw wawes often doe ; 2lie, If upon a Just warre the Lord should deliver thera into 
our hands, wee might easily haue men, woenien and children enough to exchange for Moores, 
which wilbe more gayneful Jiilladge for us than wee conceive, for I do not see how wee can thrive 
uiitill wee getl into a stock of slaues sufiacient to doe all our buisiness, for our children's children 
will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedom 
to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie 
well how wee sliall maynteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant.' " 

A matter of domestic economy entered largely into the subject. They could' 
make valuable exchanges of Indian captives for Moors, a sort of negroes, and this 
writer says that one white servant was more expensive to his master than twenty 
Moors. 

•'The ships that shall bring Moores may come home laden with salt which may beare most of the 
chardge, if not all of yt. But I marvayle Conecticott should any wayes hasard a warre without 
your helpe- (M. H. S. Coll., IV, vi, Co.) -E. Y. E." 

You see there the Massachusetts thrift. They wanted to put the whole cost of 
the voyage upon part of the cargo, so that the slaves they intended to purchaee 
should not bear any portion of it. 

Rev. Dr. Belknap, of Boston, Massachusetts, in a letter to Judge Tucker, of Wil- 
liamsburg, Virginia, in 1795, ijdmits the existence of negro slavery in Massachu 
setts, and that the slave trade was prosecuted bj' merchants in Massachusetts. He 
says that "the slaves purchased in Africa were chieily sold in the West Indies, or 
in the South.ern Colonies; but when tliese markets were glutted, and the price low, 
some of them were brought hither." He says, the slaves were most numerous in 
Massachusetts about 1*745, and amounted to about 1 to 40 of the whites; and pro- 
bably numbered about 4,000 or 5,000.* 

* Mass. His. Collections, Volume IV, pp. 191—211. 



15 

la 1705, by another act, slaves were, for certain offences, to be sold out of the 
province. Any negro or mulatto, who should strike apy of the English or other 
Christian nation, was to be severely whipped. Marriages were to be allowed be- 
tween slaves, but I have found no law prohibiting a husband and wife from being sold 
apart. An import duty on negroes of £4 per head was imposed, but the duty was 
to be paid back, if the nefgro was exported, and "b*07iajide sold in any other plan- 
tation." "And the like advantages of the drawback shall be allowed to -the pur- 
chaser of any negro sold within the Province." 

In 1707, we find an act punishing free negroes or mulattoes, for harboring any 
negro or mulatto servant. And in 1718, an act i^nposed a penalty on every master 
of a vessel who should carry away any person under age, or bought or hired ser- 
vant, without the master's or parent's consent. All these laws are to be found in the 
old folio volumes of Provincial Statutes. 

"The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts prohibited the enlistment of slaves in 
the array ; thus showing that slavery legally existed there in May, 1775. The rea- 
son given is a curious one — that they were contending for the liberties of the Colo- 
nies, and the admission into the army of any others but freemen, would be incon- 
sistent with the principles to be supported, and reflect dishonor on the Colony."* 

'•In the year 1657, (during the reign of Endicott,) Lawrence Southwick, and 
Cassandra, his wife, very aged members of the Church in Salem, Massachusetts, for 
offering entertainment to two Quakei-s, were fined and imprisoned. They absented 
themselves from meeting, and were fined and whipped. A son and daughter of this 
ag«d, and according to Puritan standard, pious couple, were also fined for non- 
attendance at meeting; and not paying this fine, the General Court, by a special 
order, empowered the Treasurer to sell them as slaves to any of the English nation 
at Virginia or Barbadoes.'"f 

Mr. Samuel G. Drake, in his History of Boston, says that " many Irish people 
had been sent to New England," and sold as "slaves or servants." Also, that 
•'many of the Scotch people had been sent, before this, in the same way. Some of 
them had been taken prisoners, at the sanguinary battle of Dunbar. There arrived 
in one ship, the 'John and Sara,' John Greene, master, early in the Summer of 
It55'2, about 272 persons. Captain Greene had orders to deliver them to Thomas 
Kemble, of Charlestown, who was to sell them, and, with the proceeds, to take 
freight for the West Indies.":]; 

It is thus sho.wn that negro slaver}' was a Massachusetts institution. In the Con- 
vention which formed the Constitution, the committee of detail reported the form 
of one with this clause : 

" No tax or duty shall be laid by the Legislature on articles espoi'ted from any State ; nor on the 
misratioii or importation of such persona as the several States shall think proper to admit; nor 
i^liali such migration or importation be prohibited." 

If that provision had been retained, or if one authorizing Congress to prohibit 
the slave trade had not been adopted, any State could have continued it indefinitely. 
The people of Massaehxisetts were at that time largely and profitably engaged in 
the slave trade to the southern States. Luther Martin, of Maryland, proposed to 
amend the section as reported, so as to allow a prohibition or tax on the importa- 
tion of slaves to be imposed by Congress. The members from Massachusetts divided 
on this propositson of Luther Martin. That section, with others, was referred to a 
committee of eleven, but Massachusetts failed to vote on the motion to refer, and 
t/mt committee reported in lieu of it a provision authorizing Congress to prohibit 
the slave trade after the beginning of the year 1800. Mr. Pinckney, of South Car- 
olina, moved to strike out 1800 and insert 1808. That motion prevailed, Massachu- 
setts voting in favor of it; and thus by her position the slave trade would have been 
allowed to continue in perpetuity; but other States controlling her on that point, she 
was enabled to procure a continuance of it for twenty years longer. She, and all 
the States, voted for the provision authorizing the rendition of fugitive slaves. To 
that, which she now opposes with phrensied passion, there was no objection in the 
Convention. Her course is explained by the fact that the slave trade was her trade. 
She furnished the ships and sailors that visited the slave marts on the African 
coast and purchased negro captives from their savage conquerors for rum and 
trinkets, and carried them to the southern States and sold them for enriching 
prices in gold. She voted to continue her trade in slaves. 

* Hon. E. R. Potter's Speech in the Senate of Rhode Island, March 14, 1S63. 
t Lambert's History of Colony at New Haven, p. 1S7. 
t History and Antiquities oi Boston, 1S55, p. 342. 



16 

_ If Massachusetts had been situated in the low latitudes, and her soil had been 
rich, inexhaustible alluvion, producing cotton, sugar, and rice, who doubts that she 
would have been heavily peopled with African slaves, that she would now have 
held and would continue to hold on to them with the firm grip which has ever 
characterized the spirit of her ail-covetousness, that she would to this day have 
been intensely pro-slavery; and'that her two Senators, if under that state of things 
they could have got to the Senate, would be her most faithful representatives; and 
that she and they would now be resisting vehemently and obstinately such assaults 
upon the institution as they are making upon it? Massachusetts has always been 
active, energetic, alert, inventive, intellectual, avaricious, intermeddling, fanatical, 
domineering ; but her love of acquisition has ever been and still is her master pas- 
sion. She continued illicitly the slave trade after the law of Congress prohibiting 
it went into operation, and when it was finally broken up by the combined action 
of Congress, courts, and cruisers, and could no longer minister to her rapacity by 
the smuggling of slaves into the southern States her more subordinate characteris- 
tics, fanaticism and meddlesomeness, began to spring up, and after a while became 
dominant. She conceived the project of robbing the people of the southern States 
of the slaves that she had carried and sold to them for money. In the name of a 
spurious philanthropy she commenced to agitate in every form most industriously 
and intensely to distroy that property, not in Cuba and Brazil, but among her 
own countrymen and customers, and set up her impudent and absurd " higher law " 
conceits to break down the constitutional and legal guarantees with which it had 
been so long environed, and which she contributed so much to build up. She inau- 
gurated not only in her own borders, but in every locality to which her people 
could gain access, a general system of talking, lecturing, declaiming, and preaching 
against the "great crime of slavery," publishing newspapers, tracts, novels, essays,, 
books, and pictures, all fraught with the basest falsehoods and slanders against it 
and slaveowners, and rendering and intending to render it abhorrent to the north- 
ern people. 

Massachusetts thus estranged, divided, and exasperated the people of the free 
and slave States. She, with malice aforethought, schooled them to hate each other 
with a diabolical purpose of sundering the Union and subverting the Constitution 
because of the protection which it gave to the owners of slaves. She complained 
xhat the freedom of speech and the press and her rights were violated because.the 
slave States would not open their bosoms to her nefarious agitation of that property, 
and of the right upon which it was founded. Let us look at her deliberate resolves. 

Mr._ WILKINSON. If the Senator from Kentucky will permit me, I will move 
an adjournment. 

Mr. DAVIS. Well, this is a pretty good stopping place. 

Mr. WILKINSON. I wish to move an adjournment: but before doing so, I ask 
the Senate to take up Senate bill No. 41, to promote enlistments in the Army of the 
United States, and for other purposes, with a view to make it the special order for 
Thursday next, at one o'clock. 

The VICE PRESIDENT. That motion will be entertained bv the unanimous con- 
sent of the Senate. If there be no objection, that will be regarded as the sense of 
the Senate, and that bill will be assigned for Thursday next, at one o'clock, and be 
made the special order for that hour. The question now is on an adjournment. 

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate adjourned. 

Mr. DAVIS on the next day resumed his remarks as follows : 

Mr. President: A philosopher and a poet once published a couplet: 

" For forms of government let fools contest ; 
That which is best administered is best." 

There is more truth and philosophy than poetry in that couplet. In point ot 
excellence and perfection of form there is no Government that ever had exist- 
ence which is equal to ours; but in its administration at this time I believe that it 
is one of the most oppressive and grinding that now exists. I think it is practically 
a military despotism. There is no constitutional provision, there is no law of Con- 
gress, there is no constitution or law of a State but what crumbles in its presence 
and at its touch. 

The Constitution of the United States establishes the judicial department of the 
Government. It refers all questions of a judicial character, whether arising under 
the Constitution or the law, to that department for its decision. There is no right 
of the citizen, whether it be personal, appertaining to his life and his liberty, or his 
property, but what is legitimately the subject of the inquiry and judgment of the 



17 

judicial department of the Government. But in this day of usurpation of power 
and of practical revolution these provisions of the Constitution and the law are 
wholly disregarded; and the President of the United States, under a claim of mil- 
itary necessity, repudiates and sweeps away the whole Constitution and all the 
laws of Congress, and all the civil tribunals appointed by the Constitution and the 
law for their enforcement, and in their stead he substitutes, by his own arbitrary 
will, military courts, and makes the indefinite and indefinable law of their own will 
the rule of their proceedings, action, and judgments, instead of the ordinary and 
civil law by which to adjudge and punish the citizen. 

There is no man whose rights are safe from the assaults of the Government of 
the United States at this time. There is no man whose property is not subject to 
be taken from him by the arbitrary action of some subordinate military officer, 
without compensation, without any proper inquiry for the purpose of deciding 
whether there is a state of case in which such power may be rightfully exercised. 
There is no provision made by law to remunerate the owner of property for that 
which is thus arbitrarily taken from him. The writ of habeas corpus is suspended ; 
and on that point I will remark that the only pi-oper effect of it is to prevent the 
citizen from having that summary and ex parte examination of his case that is inci- 
dent to the return and to the hearing of the ;s\'rit. The suspension of the writ does 
not properly arrest or suspend or obstruct the legal trial by the proper civil court, 
which every citizen is entitled to have according to the guarantee of the Constitu- 
tion ; and any courts which lend themselves to the purpose of suspending the due 
administration of the law by refusing such trials, make themselves criminally sub- 
servient to the same usurpation of power. 

There is no citizen of the United States, even in the loyal States, but what is 
subject, at all times, to be arrested at any hour of the day or the night, without 
any process issued out according to the requisitions of the Constitution, without 
any charge of ofteuse or crime, without its being communicated to him what is the 
cause of his arrest; and he is subject to be dragged from his home to distant 
prisons, a-nd there to he indefinitely confined in a dungeon without any protection 
or redress. 

Sir, under our form of constitutional government, and of its limited and lestricted 
jurisdiction, in addj^tion to the abuses which 1 have enumerated, all the St^te laws 
of every State, 103'al as well as disloyal, are subject to be superseded by the arbi- 
trary will of the Presidert and his military subordinates; courts are deposed; 
judges are driven from their halls; ministerial officers with process in their hands 
are interdicted from making execution qf them ; and armed men invade the courts 
for the purpose of suppressing the due execution of law and defeating the protec- 
tion which should be vouchsafed to every citizen. 

Sir, tiot only all this abuse; but when the wave of rebellion is driven back from 
some of the States, and our conquering armies have taken or are about to take un- 
disputed possession of those reconquered States, the President of the United States 
assumes the unconstitutional and dictatorial power to prohibit those States from 
returning to the Union under their constitutions and laws. He imposes upon them 
conditions which he has no more authority or power to impose ihan j-ou or I have, 
and he requires that these conditions shall be complied with by their people before 
they shall be admitted to their constitutional rights as States of this Confederacy, 
and the people of those States to the protection, the rights, and the liberties guar- 
antied to them by the Federal Constitution and laws and their own Slates' consti- 
tutions and laws. 

Sir, under the impression produced upon my mind by this hasty and imperfect 
review, I come to the conclusion, and I here declare in my place my solemn convic- 
tion, that the despotism of Russia or of Austria is not so oppressive, so galling, and 
so grinding as the military despotism that is now in full operation in the United 
States. This military despotism has been but partially executed. Reelect the in- 
cumbent who now fills the presidential chair, or elect a man of the same or more 
extreme principles and policy, and you then confirm by the vote of the people of 
the United States the present usurpations of those in power, their assumptions of 
that enormous and tyrannical power that never was intended to be, and never was 
in fact, delegated to them by the framers of the Constitution, and which if it had 
been proposed would have produced a prompt I'ejection by that body unanimously, 
I have no doubt, if it had not broken up the body itself without accomplishing its 
vrork. 

Sir, what said, as reported in the papers, our Secretary of State to the British 
minister, Lord Lyons? "My lord, I can touch a bell on my light hand and order 
the arrest of a citizen of Ohio ; I can touch the bell again and order the imprison- 



18 

ment of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth except that of the Presi- 
dent can release him. Can tlie Queen of England do as much?" No, sir; nor the 
Emperor Napoleon, nor the Emperor Alexander, nor any other potentate of the 
earth, can enact the same despotism that is expressed in this brief but most true 
and most terrible picture of arbitrary power. 

Mr. ANTHONY. Allow me to ask the Senator from Kentucky when such re- 
marks were made by tjie Secretary of State? 

Mr. DAVIS. I have just stated that all I know about it is its publication in the 
newspapers 

Mr. ANTHONY. Does the Senator deem that sufficient authority on which to 
present such a statement to the Senate? 

Mr. DAVIS. I should be gratified to find that it was not true; but if it not true 
I should suppose the Secretary of State would contradict it. 

Mr. ANTHONY. I leave the Senator himself to decide whether it is not more 
jiroper to find out, that a statement is true before he quotes it in the Senate. 

Mr. DAVIS. Here is the report of a nio^^t extraordinary declaration by the Secre- 
tarj" of State to the minister of the first Power on earth accredited to our Govern- 
ment. This declaration is published in the papers, and, so far as I know and have 
understood, it never has been contradicted. 

Mr. ANTHONY. I will ask if the Senator from Kentucky 

Mr. DAVIS. Let me proceed, if you please. Make a memorandum of your 
questions, and present them to me when I get through. I would rather answer 
thera altogether. 

Mr. ANTHONY. The only question I wish to ask is whether the Senator him- 
self is in tiie habit of conti-adicting the remarks he finds in the newspapers about 
himself, or are we to believe everything that we see about him in the papers which 
he does not contradict? 

Mr. DAVIS. If I were Secretary of State, and such a remark as that were made 
about my communications to Lord Lyons, the British minister, and it was not true, 
I certainly would contradict it. 

But, 51 r. President, I proceed now in the line of my remarks. It is not my pur- 
pose to occupy any more time than is necessary, and I do not wish to trouble the 
Senate again at any length. I know the Senate nre weary witU hearing me, and, 
to acknowledge the God's truth, I am beginning to be really wearied of hearing 
myself [Laughter.] 

Mr. Presiilent, when I yielded the floor yesterday I had advanced to that stage 
in the historj' and the progress of action by the great State of Massachusetts when 
she had reversed all her former principles and positions on the subject of slavery, 
And now let me read of some public action and resolves of that State in support 
oO this new and most extraordii\ary, unconstitutional, illegal, and unjust 'policy 
iipon which she has entered with so much vim. A convention was held in Boston 
in 185.5 that unanimously adopted resolutions which I will read: 

" Resoli-ed, That a Constitution which provides for a slave representation and a slave oligarchy 
in Congress. Which lesralizes slave-hunting and slave-catching on every inch of Ameriran soil, and 
which pledges the military and naval power of the country to l>eep four million elinttel slaves in 
their chains, is to be trodden under foot and pronounced accursed, however unexcept'ionable and 
valuable its other provisions may be " 

When Massachusetts was fulminating such a denunciation as that against the 
Constitution, why did she not recollect and why was she not brought to shame and to 
dumbness b}' lier previous course in relation to the same subject? Why was she 
not struck mute bv her course in the Convention which formed the Constitution of 
the United States? Why did she denounce a provision of the Constitution that 
was passed by tlie unanimous support of tlie members of the Convention, including 
her own, that provision which secures to the owners of fugitive slaves their rendi- 
tion from other States into which tliey may have escaped? 

The next resolution of this series is: 

"Jienoh'cd, That the one great issue before the, country is the dissohition of the Union, in 
comparison with which all other issues with the slave power are as dust in the balance; there- 
fore Wrt will give ourselves to th« worlc of annulling this 'covenant with death' as essential to 
our own innocency and the speedy and everlasting overthrow of the slave system." 

Sir, gentlemen get up now and flippantly and audaciously hurl the charge of 
treason at other mefubers of the Senate, and at true and loyal citizens over the 
land — men who have utteretl this treasonable sentiment, men who have cherished 
it as the purpose and object of their lives and of their policy. In January, 1857, 
Massachusetts held a State convention at Worcester, that passed the resolutions 
that I will now read: 



19 

'■'■Resolved, That this movement cioes not seek merely iliguriion, but the more perfect union 
of the free States by the expulsion of the slave Stales from the confederation in which they 
have ever been an element of Jiscord, danger, and disgrace.'' 

There is a slight mistake. The true subject of that denunciation should have 
been, not the slave States, but the State of Massachusetts herself. " ttive the devil 
his due." Speak of South Carolina and the other States that are now in this wicked 
rebellion, and when, and where, aod how did they ever interfere with the constitu- 
tions and laws of the northern or free States, with their domestic institutiou^s, with 
their rights of property, with any of those interests or affairs that were left to them 
by the Constitution and over which they had the exclusive jurisdictioul The 
southern States never inteiMueddled in the domestic concerns of Massaehu'^etts or 
any of the other northern States; and if Matsachusetts had herself acted with the 
the same forbearance, with the same scrupulous regard to the provisions and the 
spirit of the Constitution of the United States and to the great principles upon 
which our system, State aud Federal, is based, we should not now have this de- 
plorable war upon us. 

The next resolution was: 

" Resolreil, That it is not probable that the. ultimate severance of the Union will be an act 
of deliberation or discussion, but that a long period of deliberation and discussion must precede 
it; and this we meet to begin.'* 

They mean to begin for the diabolical purpose of agitating with a view to the dis- 
solution of the Union! Was there ever so treasonable an avowal so boldly made 
by any body of men? 

" Resolved, That henceforward, instead of regarding it as an objection to any system of policy, 
that it will lead to the separation of the States, we will proclaim that to be the highest of all 
recommendations and the greatest proof of statesmanship ; and we will support, politically or 
otherwise, such men and measures as appear to tend most to this result. 

"■Resolved, That by llie repeated confession of northern and southern statesmen, 'the existence 
of the Union is the chi>f guaranty of slavery:' and that the despots of the whole world have 
everyihing to fear, and the slaves of the whole world everything to hope, from its destruction 
and the rise of a free northern republic 

" Rewhed, That the soouer the separation takes place the more peaceful it will be ; bv(t that 
peace or war is a secondary consideration A view of our present perils. Slavery must be con- 
quered, ' peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.' " 

That principle they then took up and they are now acting fully up to its execu- 
tion, not by the power of Massachusetts alone, but by the aggregate power of 
the vast armies of the Unifed States. 

" Resolved, That the experience of more than sixty years has proved our national Government 
to be a mere creature aud tool of the slave power." 

How? Had not tlie free States prepondei^ted in the two Houses of Congress 
and in the electoral college whieii made the Pi'esident and Vice President ever 
since the beginning of the Government? Had they not always the power and the 
strength to make whom they willed President and Vice President, and to pass sucli 
laws as they chose? Then the coui'se of presidential elections and of congressional 
legislation was the judgment and the act of the free States, at least so many of them 
and such of their representatives and electors as when united with those from the 
slave States, gave them power. But my recollection both of legislation and of 
presidential elections is that never until sectional parties grew up in the United 
States were there any divisions of that kind in relation to any subject of policy and 
legislation, or in the election of President and Vice President; but it was always a 
mixed vote of free and slave States, without a division and separation by the line 
of slavery. 

" Resolved, That the experience of more than sixty years has proved our national Government 
to be a mere creature and totil of the slave power, subservient only to the purpose of despotism ; 
a formidable obstacle to the advancement and prosparity both of the free and slave States ; a libel 
upon our democratic theories of government ; a disgrace to the civilization of the age, and a 
bitter curse to the cause of freedom in our own country and throughout the world." 

Did not every point and subject of this bitter malediction exist at the time that 
the Convention framed our present Constitution? Did they not all exist at the 
era of the Declaration of Independence, and when it was recognized by the treaty 
of 178.3? Were not all these matters that are thus bitterly denounced, originated, 
built up, and sustained by the action of Massachusetts ? These resolutions proceed: 

" Resolved, That, in view of this lone and painful experience, we have no longer any hope of 
its reformation, but are fully convinced that the best interests of every section of the country re- 
ijuire itsimmeiliate dissolution. 

^'Resolved, That this convention recommends, as the first step toward the accomplishment of this 
object, the organization in each of the States of a political party outside of the present Constitu- 



20 • 

lion and Union— a party whose candidates eliall be publicly pledged, in the event of tlieir election, 
to ignore thft Federal Government, to refuse an oath to itd-Conslitution, and to make their respect- 
ive States free and independent communities." 

Sir, was there ever a fouler or more audacious position of disloyalty to our Gov- 
ernment, a bolder and more daring disregard of the obligation which every citizen 
owed to the Government, than is manifested in this series of resolutions? Now, I 
will read some of the mottoes in^ciibed upon the banners of this dissolution paity 
in the State of Massachusetts and other States who are members of the loyal leagues 
and making such lofty claims of unconditional support of the Union: 

"Thorouiih organization and independent political action on the part of the non-sIaveUolding 
whites of thtt South. lneli«ibility ol slavehoMers. Nevt-r another vole to the traffickers in human 
flesh. 

"No patronage to slaveholding merchants; no guests to slaveholding hotels; no fees to slave- 
holding lawyers; no employment to slaveholding phy&icians; noaudience to slaveholding parsons-; 
no recognition o< pro-slavery men except ms ruffians, outlaws, nnd criminals. 

"Immediate death to slavery, or, if not immediate, unqualilied proscription of its advocates 
during the period of its e'Xistence.'' 

Was there ever a fiercer, a more savage and unrelenting war denounced against 
any institution or any set of men who w*>re faithfully sustaining their Governtnent 
and laws, their only sin being the adoption of .■slavery, an institution founded by 
Massachusetts? 

The descendants of those men now turn upon an institution which they fostered 
and carried to and enlarged in the Southern States by the slave traffic, in their 
own ships and with their own capital. Is it not one of the most extraordinary 
and extreme inconsistencies ever exhibited to mankind ? Could any race of people 
except the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers be guilty of it? 

Mr. President, Massachusetts in 1843 passed her first law in direct hostility to 
the fugitive slave law of 1793. This last law was enacted in obedience to an 
express provision of the Constitution, that persons held to slavery in one State 
escaping into another should be rendered back to their owners. That provision 
of the Constitution was as valid and a.s obligator}- on the people of Massachusetts 
and their Senators as anj^ provision in that instrument. The law was passed when 
Washington was President, and by a Congress many of whose members had Vjeen 
engaged in tlie revolutionary struggle and had*been members of the Federal Conven- 
tion. It was passed in the Senate without a division, and in the House of Represen- 
tatives by a vote of 58 to 7. It came under the revision of the courts of the United 
States, and of the States, and it wassustained by everj' judicial tiibunal, Federal and 
State. It was approved bj' the Father of his Coyntr^'/the man at the head of the 
human race, who rises high above every other specimen of humanity notwith- 
standing he was a slaveholder, and who in all his attributes and his whole life was 
more godlike than any man that has appeared upon earth since the days of the 
inspired apostles. 

Shortlj' after Congress had passed the second fugitive slave law, in 1850, there 
was formed in Boston an association that combined talent, wealth, office, position, 
numbers and permanency, for the s])ecial and declared pur[»ose, and by all means 
even unto organized armed resistance, to defeat any and all attempts to execute the 
fugitive slave laws in that State, and now her paramount and darling purpose 
in the vehement support she gives to the war, is not for restoration, but revolu- 
tionary and violent overthrow of slavery and the organism of the slave States, and 
virtually of the Union and Constitution of the United States, by making their 
armies the instrument of this her work of destruction. 

Will the Senator from Massachusetts at the head of the Military Committee state 
on this floor that he never had knowledge of that association in the city of Boston 
and of the special and isolated object of its organization? Did he never meet 
■with it in council? Was he never advised with by its leading and active members? 
Did he never give it his countenance and support? The other Senator from Massa- 
chussetts is too open I presume to deny his position in relation to that organiza- 
tion, but his more covert eoUeague is dumb and silent in relation to these points 
of interregatory. But 'I will proceed with what 1 was saying in regard to Massa- 
chusetts Her most sinster, selfish, and wicked ends are in that way to get poss- 
ession of the rich cotton and sugar lands and the freed' negroes of the Southern 
States, and work them in perpetuity for the emolument of the sons of the Pilgrim 
Fathers; to reduce the Southern States to a sort of colonial dependence, and to 
make them industrially, commercially, and politically subservient to herself and 
the nortnern States. 

That is the whole scheme, combining fanaticism, avarice, meddlesomeness, and 
all the other obnoxious characteristics that appertain to that peculiar people, the 
descendents of the Pilgrim Fathers. 



21 

I have before me a life of the fugitive slave Burns written by Stevensj a Massa- 
chusetts man. After speaking of the public excitement produced in Boston by that 
arrest, he adds : 

"No immediate step was taken, however, except by an association styled a committee of vigil- 
ance. This association took its origin from the passase of the fugitive slave act. Its sole object 
■was to defeat iyi all cases the execution of thai hated Statute. Thoroughly organized under a 
written code of laws, with the necessary officers and working committees, arranged on the princi- 
ple of a subdivision of labor, with wealth and professional talent at its command, actuated by the 
most determined purpose and operating in secret, it was well fitted to strike powerful blows for 
the accomplishment of its object." 

The object was the defeat and the overthrow of an act of Congress by a bold 
and treasonable band of conspirators-, which, if successful, would have been pro 
tanto a dissolution of the Union; and yet men who support and give their presence 
and countenance and aid to such organization for such a purpose, have the face 
to come here and take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, 
which this whole movement was intended to strike down in part, and to brand as 
disloyal and semi traitorous men more true and loyal to the Government and to 
every principle of good faith than they. The historian further says of this associa- 
tion : 

"The roll of its members displayed the most diversified assemblage of characters, but this 
diversity only fecured the greater efficiency. The white and the colored race, free-born sons of 
Massachusetts and fusitive slaves from the South here co-operated together. Among them were 
men of fine culture and of high social position. Some of the rich men of Boston were enrolled in 
this committee."' 

The historian then proceeds to give details of the many modes in which this 
organization operated. He adds : 

"By this committee of vigilance the case of Burns was now taken in hand. Early in the after- 
noon of the day following his arrest a full meeting for the purpose was secretly convened " 

For what purpose ? To take Burns from the custody of the law, and in that way 
to repeal, practically to put down, the law of Congress. I read further: 

'•On the main point there was but one voice; all agreed that, be the commissioner's decision 
what it might. Burns should never be taken back to Virginia if it were in their power to prevent." 

Burns was arrested or the 24th of May, 1854, and by the judgment of the commis- 
sioner was rendered up to his master the 2d of June. In that interval there was 
addressed a circular letter to the " yeomanry of Massachusetts" adjuring them to 
to rendezvous at Boston with a view to the case of Burns. Some three hundred 
men were organized in Worcester and marched to Boston, and large numbers 
from most of the adjacent towns concentrated there. Every sort of appeal was 
made by the leading friends of Burns to inflame and madden the people in his favor 
and to rescue hitn at any cost. One night it was estimated there were from eight 
to ten thousand infuriated men. and the most of them secretly armed, surrounding 
the court-house in which he was confined to coerce his release. To execute the 
fugitive slave law in his case about two thousand armed and drilled men, artillery, 
infantry, marines, and volunteers, had to be assembled to sustain the civil magistrates. 

But for that effective and large military force to sustain the civil officers, what 
would have become of the law of Congress and of the appointed magistrates for its 
execution? The whirlwind of passion and crime that then agitated Boston and rocked 
that city from its ceiitre to its exterior would have swept these powerless officers 
from their posts and Burns would have been rescued and set free, and there would 
have been a practical revolution of the Government consummated, not total, but 
to the extent of the overthrow of an important policy and law of Congress, in 
which nearly half the States were deeply interested. If bold and daring treason 
bad been successful, the Government would virtually have been brought to an end; 
its whole moral power would have been subverted; and it would have been con- 
temned, not only in relation to that law, but to all others that the treasonable 
and wicked spirit of Massachusetts might have prompted her to resist. 

On the second night after Burns' arrest, and before the forces to rescue him, or 
those to prevent it, had assembled in large numbers, a portion of his armed friends, 
led on by Rev. Thomas W. Higginson, made an assault on the court house in which 
he was confined and guarded by United States soldiery, to wrest him from the 
custody of the law. The door was ponderous and strong, but, by a kind of cat- 
apult, tile assailants broke out one of its panels, and Higginson and a few of his as- 
sociate traitors made an entry. Thej' were repelled, but Batchelder, one of the 
assistant marshals, was mortally wounded, it was said by Higginson; and a soldier 
was also wounded. Higginson was both a murderer and traitor, and, if possible 



22 

should have been twice hung -in expiation of each offenee. But the {jresent Execu- 
tive has appointed him colonel of a negro regiment. 

Sir what kind of a moral example is thati The PreGident of the United States 
is sworn to uphold, defend, and protect the Constitution and to execute the laws, 
and yet he appoints a mui'derer and a traitor to be a colonel of one of the regiments 
now in the military service of the United States. 

The Senator fiom Massachusetts — I mean the military Senator — did not answer 
but evaded the question whether "he was against the rescue of Burns," and replied, 
"I had nothing to do with it;" and repeated, "I had nothing to do with it, and had 
no knowledge of it until after it transpired. I was not in my own State at the 
tin>e." And to the question, "Did you ever condemn that insurrection ? Did you 
ever do anything to put it down — its spirit?" he would not answer directly, but 
evasively, thus: " There was no occasion; it was put down quickly." 

At tlie time of the attempted rescue of Burns, did not that Senator know that 
there existed a powerful organization in Boston formed for no other purpose than 
to defeat tlie execution of the fugitive slave law as often as there should be an 
arrest under it.^ Was he ever counseled in relation to that association, and its ob- 
ject and modus operandi? Had he learned that this rescue would be attempted, 
and did he run away from liis friends and comrades as he did from the battle of 
Bull Run, to avoid responsibility and danger? Xatick, his place of residence, is, I 
believe, about seventeen miles from Boston. How came he lo be away from his 
home and out of the State for more than nine days from the time Burns was arrest- 
ed until he was rendered up and taken "back to old Virginny?" Where was he all 
that time? What was he doing? Is it not most strange that in more than nine 
daj-s he should not have heard of this most exciting affair, tlie telegraph, too, 
being in operation? But the member from Massachusetts said of this demonstration 
to rescue Burns: 

"The Senator [Mr. Davis] prates about a little mob composed of a few men in the city of Boston, 
and brands their action as insurrection and rebellion. Insurrection! Kebellion! t*ir, there was 
no insurrection; there was no rebellion. It was almost but a mob, and a very small mob at that." 

The Senator has become so greatly augmented that he has not only Cyclopean 
notions of himself but also ot rebellions and insurrections. I have presented to 
the Senate the facts of the attempt to rescue Bur}is, as published in the newspapei's 
at the time, and as they have since been recorded by a Boston historian. It was 
one outbreak of a numerous and powerful organization of conspirators and traitors, 
who had combined and confederated together to defy the authority of the United 
States, and by force of arms and all other means to defeat wltoUy and in ali cases 
as they might arise the execution of their law. That organization had then existed % 
for years, and I suppose still exists. It was much more formidable in its plan, ar- 
rangement, numbers, wealth, intelligence, duration, and in the force it displayed 
when the rescue was attempted than was the combination in Pennsylvania to defeat 
the execution of the law of Congress to levy an excise on whisky. That was at the 
time and now is in history denominated an insurrection, and so will and so ought 
the attempt to rescue Burns to be characterized, and if it had been successful 
would have betn in fact a revolution of the Government b}- force of arms. 

But, Mr. Piesident, in the face of the facts which I have arraj-ed to the contrary, 
the member from Massachusetts has the effrontery to declare to the country in this 
Chamber that — 

"No man in her Legislature desired or expected to resist the authority of the Federal Govern' 
meiit. What Massachusetts intended to accomplish by her legislation was the protection of her 
oten citizens; and if any question arose between her and the Kederal Gov.-rnmeDt, growing out 
of the attempted execution of the fugitive slave act, she was ever ready to submit those quesiions 
to the judicial tribunals of the country and to abide, the verdict." 

This position is both disingennous and untrue. It attempts to make a discrimi- 
nation between the men in her Legidaturc and her people, and to claim a special 
immunity for the former alone. All questions arising under the fugitive slave law, 
however the Legislature of Massachusetts might endeavor to draw those coming up 
in that State to her own courts, are by an express provision of the Constitution re- 
ferred exclusively to the decision of the Federal courts. Tliej* had all been decided, 
again and again, by the Supreme Court and the circuit courts of the United States 
against her positions and assumptions. She would not abide by those decisions; 
and it was in a treasonable spirit and effort to reverse them, and practieally to nul- 
lify the fugitive slave laws of Congress, that she passed what is called " her per- 
sonal liberty bill," by which, against the Constitution of the United States, she 
sought to bring and retry all those questions in her own abolition courts and by her 
own abolition juries. 



23 

Was Burns and every other fugitive s]ave who might get to Boston citizens of 
Massachusetts? That is the position of the Senator and his State. Governor An- 
drew ostentatiously published that if Lincoln would make a proclamation of 
freedom to the slaves the roads and allej's would swarm with Massachusetts volun- 
teers rushing to the war. Yet in a very short time afterwards the agents of Mas- 
sachusetts, with the Senator's co-operation, were scouring the rebel and loyal States, 
the slave and the free States, offering large bounties for negro recruits, free, slave, 
and freedmen, to till up her quota and keep her own white people from the war. 
Massachusetts is a great State, but her people have some queer notions, and alwaj's 
think their will ought to control. The member from Massachusetts says: 

"Sir, the imputations, the reproaclies, the slatitiers, that so £r''l>!y flow from the lips of the Sen- 
ator from Kentucky will not reach the Commonwealth of Massachusietts. No word of his can 
soil her name or dim her fame. There is not strength enough to his arm to Uiiig a shaft that 
shall strike that proud old Commonwealth." 

The Senator attempts to pull on the buskins of Mr. Webster, and affects the terse- 
ness, dignity, and grandeur of his defense of Massachusetts against the assaults of 
Senator Hayne, of South Carolina. I advise liis succfssor to quit his attempts to 
copy Mr. Webster; he only apes his model, and it is miserably bad apeiiig too; or 
some time when be is attempting to swell himself to the stature of Mr. Webster, the 
scene of the frog and the ox may be re-enacted. But I concede one of the positions 
tions of the member from Massachusetts: ''No word of mine can soil her name or 
dim her fame." If she has not herself, or such of her degenerate sons as ^he have 
not soiled her name or dimmed her fame, they are safe from me. But let us exam- 
ine that quesiion a little further. 

Her arrogant, dictatorial, and " rule-or-ruin " spirit broke forth in opposition to 
the acquisition of Louisiana during Mr. Jefferson's Adm.inistration, and she de- 
nounced the treaty b}' which that vast country was acquired, because of the want 
of constitutional power on the part of our Government to acquire foreign territory, 
and also of the impolicy of the measure. She made her similar arrogant condem- 
nation of the treaty in which Spain ceded Florida to the United States. Through- 
out the war of 1812 with Great Britain, whieli was declared to protect Massachu- 
setts seamen against impressment by that haughty Power, and to vindicate the 
freedom of the seas and the rights of international commerce, in which her people 
were so largely interested, that spirit became so heightened and deepened, so ma- 
lignant and treasonable, as to break forth in the most vituperative condemnation of 
the war and our own Government by the people of Massachusetts; in frequent and 
most criminal attempts to thwart and defeat the United States in their great strug- 
gle to biing the war to a speedy and successful close; in a resort by them to mani- 
fold devices to weaken, dispirit, and produce the defeat of our land and naval forces, || 
and to strengthen and give aid and comfort and victoiy to our enemy ; in continual 
and most extravagant kudation of the policy, power, and moral position of Eng- 
land in that war, and the basest disparagement of their own country and Govern- 
ment by imputations of corruption and imbecility, of prejudice against En^fland and 
subserviency to France, and a purpose, not to I'edress national wrongs, but of ra- 
pacitj', ambition, and conquest; in efforts to detach the thirteen original States and 
leave the Federal Government and the other States at war with one of the greatest 
Powers of the earth; and another most absurd and wrcked project, that New Eng- 
land should make a separate peace with Great Britain, and at the end of the war 
its States should resume their position in the United States. These are grave 
charges and most dispai'aging to Massachusetts, and it is to be deplored that they 
are true in their fullest force. 

She elected a Governor nliid Legislature hostile to the Government of the United 
States and opposed to the war, and who exerted themselves continuously and 
defiantly to uphold the cause of England, and to coerce the President of the 
United States to make an ignominious treaty, without the concession or acknowl- 
edgment by Great Britain of a single right for which the war was undertaken. 

ller people first got up t;he Essex Junto and then the Hartford Convention, both 
of which were treasonable associations, composed of the enemies of their own 
Government and the friends and sympathizers of England; and tlieir objects and 
action were to divide, our people, distract the public councils, weaken the military 
operations of the L^nited States, and to make the war so di.«astrous as to force them 
to a shamefijl peace. 

In the summer of 1812, some two months after the declaration of war. President 
Madison made a requisition on Governor Strong of that State for a portion of her 
militia to enter the service of the United States. He refused to comply; and in 
connection with his council submitted to the judges of the supreme court of that 



24 

state several questions which it will not be necessary to read, as they are embodied 
in the answers of the judges. Those answers I will read: 

To his Excellency the Oocernor and the Honorable Council of the Commomcealth of Massa- 
chusetts : 

The undersigned justices of the supreme judicial court, have considered the several (laestions 
proposed by your Excellency and Honors for their opinion. 

By the constitution of tliis Stale, the authority of commaniling the militia of the Commonwealth 
is vested exclusively in the Governor, who has all the powers incident to the office of commander- 
in-chief, and is to exercise thi-m personally, or by subordinate officers under his command, agree- 
ably to thf rules and regulations of the constitution and the Ihws of the land 

While the Governor of the Commonwealth remained in the exercise of these powers the Federal 
Constitution was ratified, by which was vested in the < ongrefs a power to provide for calling forth 
the militia to eo'ecuie the lnws of the Union, supjyress in- urrection, and repel invasi07is. and to 
provide for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service cif the United States. 
reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers. The Federal Constitution 
further provides that the President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United States, 
and of the militia of the several States when called into' the actual service of the United States. 

On the construction of the Federal and State constitutions must depend the answers to the several 
auestions proposed. As iho mtlitia of the several States may be employed in the service of the 
United States for the three specific purposes of executing the laws of the Union, of suppressing 
insurrection.s, and repelling invasions, tlie opinion of the judges is requested whether the cora- 
mandeig-in-chief of the militia of the several States have a right to determine whether any of the 
exigencies aforesaid exist, so as to require them to place the militia, or any part of it, in the service 
of the Uuited States, at the request of the President, to be commanded by him pursuant to acts of 
Congress. • 

It is the opinion of the undersigned that this right is vested in the commanders-in-chief of the 
militia of the several States. 

The Federal Constitution provides that when either of thei>e exigencies exist the militia may be 
employed, pursuant to some act of Congress, in the service of the United States; but no power 
is given, either to the President or to the Congress, to determine that either of llie said exigencies 
does in fact exist. As this power is not delegated to the United States by the Federal Constitu- 
tion nor prohibited by it to the States, it is reserved to the States respectively, and, from the 
nature of the power, it must be exercised by those with whom the States have respectively in- 
trusted the chief command of the militia. 

It is the duty of these commanders to execute this important trust agreeably to the laws of their 
several States respectively, without reference to the laws or officers of the United States in all 
eases except those specially provided for in the Federal Constitution. They must, therefore, 
determine when either of the special cases exist, obliging them to relinquish the execution of this 
trust, and to render themselves and the militia subject tiTthe command ol the President. 

A different construction, giving to Congress the right to determine when those special cases exist, 
authorizing them ro call forth the whole of the militia, and taking them from the commanders-in- 
chief of the several States and suljjecting tliem to the command of the President, would place al! 
the militia, in effect, at the will of Congress, and produce a military consolidation of the States, 
without any constitutional remedy, against the intentions of the people when ratifying the Federal 
Constitution. Indeed, since the passing of the act of Congress of February 28, 1795, vesting in the 
President the power of calling forth the militia when the exigencies mentioned in the Constitution 
shall exist, if the President has the ])ower of determining when those exigencies exist, the militia 

t)f the several States is in fact at his command and subject to his control. 
No inconveniences can reasonably be presumed to result from the construction which vests in 
the comnuuiders-in-chief of the militia in the several States 'he right of determining when the ex- 
igencies exist obliging them to place the militia in the service "f the Urtited States. These exigen- 
cies are of such a nature that the existence of them can be easily ascertained by or made known 
to the commanders-in-chief of the militia; and, when ascertained, the public interest will induce 
a prompt obedience to the acts of (Congress. 

Another question proposed to the consideration of the justices is, whether, when either of the 
exisencies exist authorizing the employing of the militia in the service of the United States, the 
militia thus employed can be lawfully commanded by any officer but of the militia except by the 
President of the United States. 

The Federal ('onstitution declares that the President shall be the Commander-in-Chief of the 
Army of t,he United States. He may undoubtedly exercise this command by officers of the Army 
of the Uni ed States, by him commissioned according to law. The President is also declared to be 
the Commander-in-Chief of the miliiia of the several States when called into tlie actual service of 
the United States. The officers of the militia are to be appointed by the States ; and i he President 
may exercise his command of the militia by the oflGcers of the militia duly appointed. But we 
know of no constitutional provision authorizing any officer of the Army of the United States to 
command the militia, or authorizing any officer of the militia to command the Array of the Uniteci 
States. The Congress may provide laws for the government of the militia when inactual service ; 
but to extend this power to the placing of them under the command of an officer not of the militia, 
except the President, would render nugatory the provision tlial the militia are to have officers ap- 
pointed by the States. 

The union of the militia in the actual service of the United States with the troops of the United 
States, so as to form one Army, seems to be a case not provided for or contemplated in the Consti- 
tution; &c. 

Now, sir, this opinion decides two principles. It states correctly that there are 
three exigencies provided for by the Constitution in which the militia of the States 
may be called into the Service of the United States: first, to execute the laws; 
second, to repel invasions; and third, to put down insurrection; but that opinion 
assumes as a constitutional principle that the power to decide when any or all these 
exigencies happens belongs not to Congress or to the President of the United States, 
but to the Governors of the States; and even when the Governors tliemselves have 
decided such an exigency to exist and have ordered their militia into the service of 



25 

the United State?, the militia can be commanded by no United States military offi- 
cer, except by the President himself. 

Sir, there is another specimen of Massachusetts loyalty: the Governor of Massa- 
chusetts having refused to order the militia of that State into the service of the 
FJnited States, some of the patriotic people of the district of Maine volunteered, 
and were placed by the President under the command of General William King. 
In the year 1813 the Legislature of that State passed a resolution inquiring of 
General King whether he had accepted any agency or commission from the United 
-States, or received from them any arms or munitions by order of the President of 
the United States. General King replied : 

"The volunteers who tendered their services to the President for the defense of their country 
were accepted and organized; and have been uirniahed wiih arms on application to the General 
Government Soon a'fter the commencement of the present war, when the services of the detached 
militia were withheld from the General Government, I aided the War Department in organizing 
such a volunteer coips as was considered necessary for the defense of this district. After two regi- 
ments were organized, the services of such a number of companies were offered as would have 
made three other regiments,- if necessary. As a citizen of the United States I have duties to per- 
form as well as a citizen of the State, in this just and holy war." 

A response worthy the friend of that often-tried and true patriot, John Holmes. 
Massachusetts afterwards asked and received paj', not for the services but for the 
time of the militia that she withheld from the United States in their second great 
struggle for independence. 

This traitorous Governor Strong and his coadjutors in Massachusetts procured the 
weak and corrupt -Governor of Vermont, Chittenden, to take their position, that it 
was tlie exclusive right of the Governors of the States to decide whether and when 
there existed an exigency that required the State militia to be put into the service 
of the United States, and to issue an infamous proclamation commanding the volun- 
teer militia of Vermont? to march back from Plattsburg, whither they had rushed 
to defend that place against the assault of one of the most formidable British armies 
that was assembled during the war. The traitors of Massachusetts were loud in 
their promises to stand by their victim, and to sustain him in their common crime; 
but their guilty souls shrank from the necessary action. The brave and patriotic 
citizen soldiers of Vermont flung back their contempt upon the treasonable missive 
of their Governor, who was representing, not his State, but British feelings and in- 
terests, and remained to cover themselves with, glory in one of the most brilliant 
achievements of the war. All honor, to the memory of those gallant and true men ! 
They were fit representatives of the heroes of Bennington. 

In May, 1813, Governor Strong sent a message to the Legislature of Massachusetts 
in which he reviewed all the grounds for the declaration of war by our Govern- 
ment against England; and argued each one in favor of oiir enemy; and concluded 
by charging the Government of the United States with having prostituted itself to 
subserve the purposes and ambition of Bonaparte. A committee of both Houses 
responded, echoing the sentiments of the Governor, and denounced the war as im- 
proper, unjust, and impolitic on the part of the United States, and asserted that — 

" While the oppressed nations of Europe are making a magnanimous and generous effort against 
the common enemy of free States, we alone, the descendants of the Pilgriitts, avtorai^e to civil 
and religious slavery, co-operate with the oppressor to bind nations in his chains andWdivert the 
lorces of one of his enemies from the mighty confliot. Were not the territories of the United 
States sufficiently extensive before the annexation of Louisiana, the projected reduction of 
Canada, and the seizure of West Florida ? Already have we witnessed the admission of a State 
beyond the territorial limits of the United States, peopled by inhabitants whose habits, language, 
religion, and laws are repugnant to the genius of our Government, in violation of the rights and 
interests of some of the parties to our national politics. The hardy people of the North stood 
in no need of the aid of the South to protect them in their liberties.'' 

Such was the loyalty of Massachusetts to the United Stales in that dark and try- 
ing hour. 

Josiah Quincy offered in the Senate of Massachusetts this preamble and resolution: 
" Whereas a proposition has been made to this Senate for the adoption of sundry resolutions ex- 
pressive of their sense of the gallantry and good conduct exhibited by Captain James Lawreoce, 
commander of the United States ship-of-war Hornet, and the ofBcers and crew of that ship, in the 
destruction of his Majesty's ship-of-war Peacock ; and whereas it has been found that former re- 
solutions of this kind passed on similar occasions relative to other officers engaged in a like ser- 
vice have given great discontent to many of the good people of this Commonwealth, it being con- 
sidered by them as an encouragement and excitement to the continuance of the present unjust, 
unnecessary, and iniquitous war, and on that account the Senate of Massachusetts have deemed 
it their duty to refrain from acting on the said propositions; and whereas, also, this determina- 
tion of the Senate may, without explanation, be construed into an intentional slight of Captain 
Lawrence, and denial of his particular merits, the Senate therefore deem it their duty to declare 
that they have a high sense of the naval skill and military and civil virtues ot Captain James Law- 
rence, and that they have been withheld oc said proposition solely from considerations relative to 
the Hatw'6 and principles of the present ivar. And to the end that all misrepresentations on thu 
subject may be obviated : 



26 

"BenoJ^ved, (as the sense of the Senate.) That in a war like the present, wagpd icithotit justijia- 
tile cause, and prosecuted in a manner that indicates that conquest and nniMUan are its real mo- 
tives, it is not becoming a moral and religiouK people to express Huy approbation of military or 
naval exploits which are not immediately connected with the defence of our sea-coast and soil." 

This resolution was adopted by the Senate of Massachusetts ISth June, 1813. V 
the present Senators from that State had been there, they would have voted for it; 
and if any Senator had introduced one in the same terms in relation to any of our 
heroes who have fallen in this war, they would have voted the expulsion of such 
Senator. 

The British authorities claimed that many prisoners taken by their cruizers on 
board American ships, as well native-born as naturalized citizens, were the subjects 
of their king ; and they were thrown into loathsome prisons for safekeeping, to be 
tried and hung, or shot, as traitors to George III. In retaliation, and to insure the 
safety of our unfortunate captive countrymen, a United States marshal lodged s me 
English prisoners in the jail of Worcestor, Massachusetts, she and most of the States 
having, soon after the Constitution went into operation, passed a law granting the 
use of her jails to the United States Government. A mob of Massachusetts traitors 
and British sympathizers attacked the Worcester jail in force, broke it open, and 
set free the British hostages. The Worcester Gazette applauded this act of treason- 
able violence, and denounced the United States marshal as "a lynx-eyed, full-blooded 
bloodhound of Mr. Madison." The Boston Advertiser exulted over the success of 
lh.\s infamous enterprise, and denominated the liberated English prisoners as "gal- 
laut officers whom Mr. Madison desired to answer for the lives of self-acknowledged 
traitors, victims of a barbarous and cruel policy." 

Soon afterwards, the Legislature of Massac tiusetts, in consummation of the shame 
and crime of this affair, passed a law pr«hibiting the use of her jails to the United 
States even for the confinement of enemy prisoners to be held for the safety of our 
captive countrymen about to be executed by British authorities on fabricated 
charges of treason, <fec. And that law authorized and required the keepers of all 
Massachusetts jails within thirty days from its passage to discharge any British 
pvisoners that were confined in them. 

At the gloomiest periods of the war, and when our country was most sorely 
pressed by her powerful foe, the Massachusetts tradei-s and shippers took out licenses 
from the British consuls to carry supplies to her armies in Spain and Portugal, 
where they were held from augmenting the armies operating againt us in their 
great struggle with Bonaparte; and her people also smuggled on a large scale to 
furnish the English armies and fleets acting against us on this continent and it^s 
coasts. One of those licensed ships was captured by an American cruiser while on 
her illicit voyage to Spain; and her owners had the assurance, to be sure many 
years afterwards, to offer a petition to Congress to be paid by the United States for 
their ship and cargo. 

The ground upon which the British party in Massachusetts urged the original 
thirteen States to abandon their Government and the other States, and also upon 
which it proposed and pressed the project that New England should make a sepa- 
rate tre^y of peace with Great Britain was, that they were oppoaed to the war, 
and it w&s. fatal to their interests. But what language can express adequate con- 
tempt for their purpose to skulk back into the Union when the war should have ter- 
minated ? They themselves furnished the only parallel, and that was in hanging out 
bhie-lights to instruct and lead the public enemy to their country's disaster. That 
scheme, the separate treaty, was strenuous!}' advocated by the Boston Advertiser. 
An embargo law was passed as one of the war measures of the United States; 
but it was denounced by the traitors of Massachusetts as void and of no effect ; 
and by connivance between them and the British consuls, was so extensively evaded 
and defeated as to produce but small results. 

That party and its presses habitually disparaged and sneered at the viotories won 
by our armies over their English enemies. 

After the battle of the Thames, the Salem Gazette announced: 

" Al length the handful of British troops, which for more than a year have baffled the nnmerons 
jirmies of the United States in the invasion <..f Canada, deprived of the geniu^i of the immortal 
Brock, have been obliged to yitld to superior power and numbers." 

The Boston Advertiser published of that battle: 

" We shall surrender all our conquests at a peace. It is indeed a hopeful exploit for Harrison, 
with live thonsund troops, who have been aesembling and preparing ever since July, 1812, to flghi 
and conquer four hundred and fifty worn-out, esbausted British regulars, whom the Indiana had 
previously deserted." 

Another journal of the same class pronounced Harrison's victory to be "the tri- 
iimpli ••(" a crowd of Kentucky savages over a handfal of brave men — no more than 
a icareh and their capture without fighting." 



27 

Here, sir, is a most flagitious violation of the truth in relation to the force of the 
British in that battle. They were five times as much as these papers state them 
to have been. 

The gallant Lawrence fell, in the unequal fighi? of the Chesapeake wit/h the 
Shannon, on his blood}' quarter deck, and his last words, "Don't give up the ship," 
became the ocean slogan of America. 

Another of our naval captains, Crowninahield, under a flag of truce, sailed for 
Halifax to bring to Salem the remains of Lawrence, and while he was on this 
sacred mission, and all the true men of the nation were mourning the untimely 
death of the hero, and Story had been appointed to speak his funeral oi-ation, one 
Boston journal announced that this solemn errand had been undertaken "by the 
jiriaatecring captain, Crowninshield ; and the Boston Advertiser asked with scoiSng 
malevolence, "What honor can be paid where a Crowniushield is chief mourner, 
and a Storj?^ chief priest? Governor Strong and his council, and most of the British 
party, had no honors or respect to pay to the martyrs in the cause of their coun- 
try's rights and independence, and therefore they stayed away from the funeral of 
Lawrence. 

Two }-ears and six months of war brought peace to our country, and notwith- 
standing Massachusetts had struck in her cause with feeble arm and traitor's heart, 
yet the nation's prowess on land and ocean won for her tacitly hnt forever the great 
international rights for which she had unsheathed the aword. 

Under the stimulants of fishing bounties and high protective tariffs, Massachu- 
setts industrv and enterprise soon commenced greatly to prosper. She )'egarded 
with sullen but not very vociferous disapprobation the acquisition of Florida. She 
probably would have been more demonstrative if the negotiator had not been her 
own Adams. When Texas was about to be annexed she became very eruptive, and 
not only reprobated the acquisition of foreign territory by joint I'esolution of Con- 
gress, but reiterated her ancient and uniform position, that it could not be legiti- 
mately done by the treaty-making power of our Government. Her Legislature 
passed these resolutions : 

^'■Resolved, That there has hitherto been uo precedent of the admission of foreign territory into 
the Union by legislation, and as the powers of legislation granted In the Constitution of the United 
States to Congress do not embrace the case of the admission of a foreign Stsite or foreign territory 
by legislation into the Union, such an act of admission would have no binding force whatever upon 
the people of Massachusetts " 

'■• Rcwlved, That the power never having been granted by the people of Massachusetts to admit 
into the Union States and Territories not within the same when the Constitution was adopted, re- 
mains with the people, and can only be exercised in such manner as the people heraufter shall 
designate and appoint." 

It being the deliberate and oft-repeated judgment of Massachusetts that the 
United States Government had no power to acquire Louisi&na, Florida, and Texas, 
and that their acquisition was detrimental to some of the States, and particularly 
to Massachusetts, and she having been to so recent a period vociferous and even 
frantic in the expression of her desire and purpose that the free States should cut 
loose from slavery and the slave States, one would have thought that she would 
have rushed to the acceptance of secession by the rebel States. Except a few crazy 
fanatics her people had always conceded fully that the Constitution and tlie Union 
protected slavery in the slave States. Mr. Webster, and all her eminent jurists and 
statesmen, except John Q. Adams, admitted the truth of that proposition, without 
any qualification or restriction whatever, and it was because there was no other es- 
cape from the protection which the Union and the Constitution gave to slavery that 
they were both to be repudiated by the abolitionists. 

fiut the abolition party within & few years had got possession of the government 
of Massachusetts; and an extreme anti-slavery party, at the presidential election of 
1856, had manifested a most rapid and extraordinary growth. Here was a new 
prospect breaking upon her radicals. They were not only meddling and fanatical, 
they not only loved money, but also power. She had always dominated and hec- 
tored over New England, and now opportunity was coming when, by alertness, 
daring, and decision, she could throw herself at the head of the great new move- 
ment, and assume in the nation and its councils the position and controlling influ- 
ence which she had maintained in New England from the beginning. She would 
become the leading State of the United States; and above all, she could minister to 
hollow philanthropy, fierce fanaticism, and insatiable avarice, by procuring the 
slaves and lands of the rebels to be confiscated, and appropriating to herself the 
lion's share. She has entered upon this bold, ambitious, and wicked enterprise, 
driven on by the combined motivs-power of al! her leading characteristics, each 
one being highly stimulated by it. 



28 

A strong ingredient with the Massachusetts men also is this sentiment: " I ha. e 
no slave; there is none who call me master; and in that respect no one shall be 
above me, and I'll bring all to my level." Never were there truer representatives 
of that sentiment than her two Senators. Never wee there more unworthy and 
unsafe lights for a great people than they and those whom they represent. 

In the excess of their hostility to slavery and slaveowners, I am at a loss to de- 
cide which dominates, tiie madman or the lieud. They show all the infernal malice 
of th« one and the uncontrollable fury of the other. The English language has 
hardly any term of reproach and obloquy that thej' have not each, again and again, 
hurled at slavery and slaveowners. "The pollution of slavery," "the great sin of 
mankind," " the shame and disgrace of the age," " the foulest stain on Christendom,"' 
" the degrading effects of slavery," " the demoralizing influences of slavei-y," "the 
brutalizing influences of slavery," "the deformities and degradation of character 
produced by slavery," "slave-aristocracy," "slave oligarchy," "slave mongers," 
"slave-hunters," "slave-catchers," "slave-breeders," " slave-stealers," and "slave- 
pirates," are some of the epithets most prodigally used by those Senators in debate 
in this Chamber. 

Sir, since the beginning of the present generation a new disease has sprung up 
in the United States. It is sometimes called "nigger on the brain," and I have 
laever known two subjects that had it in a greater degree of violence than the two 
Senators from Massachusetts. The negro has made these two Senators. The wor- 
ship of the negro and their demagogiug in relation to him have given them public 
position and oflice, and brought them to the Senate of the United States. They 
have made the negro a hobby. Both have jumped agtride of him, and it is impos- 
sible to determine which one is before and which one is behind. I believe they 
alternate their positions in that respect. But, sir, they fulfill the Scripture in one 
point. "We are commanded to remember our creator in the days of our youth. 
The negro has created those two Senators; and from their youth to the present 
time they have been worshiping him with an eastern devotion, and they will con- 
tinue this idolatry to the end of their lives. If they were to cease it Othello's oc- 
cupation would be gone. 

Let me read one or two passages from the speeches of the Senator from Masea- 
thusetts [Mr. Sumner] in relation to the negro and a dissolution of the Union. la 
a speech delivered at P'aneuil Hall, November 2, 1855, the Senator used these words : 

"Not tliat I love the Union less but freedom more <lo I now in pleading this great case insist 
•.bdt freedom at all hazards shall be preserved. God forbid that for the sake of the XTuion -we 
should eactifice the very thing for which the Union was made." 

What is his position? That the Union was made for negro freedom? Well, sir, 
it was a long day coming. The Union was first made in 1774, when the dd Articles 
yf Confederation were formed. Independence was declared in 1776, and the pres- 
ent Constitution was framed in 1787, all for the white man, and the negro was neve- 
known or dreamed of in any of those great transactions; and yet the honorabie 
Senator says that the Union was made for tlie freedom of the'negro! 

On the 19th and 20th of May, 1856, in a speech delivered in the Senate, that Sen- 
ator held this revolutionary language: 

" Already the muster has begun. The strife is no longer local, but national. Even now while I 
f peak, portents hang on all the jfrcheg of the horizon, threatening to darken the broad land, whicJi 
alrsiidi/ yiticns mitk the mutter inga of civil w.ar. The fury of the propagandists of slavery and 
the calm determination of their opponents are now diffused from the distant Territory over widf- 
tpread communities, and the whole country in all its extent — marshaling hostile divisions, and 
loresha<lowing a strife, which, unless happily averted by the triumph of freedom, v}iU become war . 
—fratricidal, parricidal war — with an accumulated wickedness beyond the wickedness of aLy 
WKr in human annals." 

■ The gentleman's words were prophecy. They are in terrible course of execution ; 
and he I, as given all the agency and energy to this war and revolntion for the di?- 
!»olulion of the Union to put down slavery- that he could command. 

I will read one other passage from a speech by that Senator. lu a debate in the 
Seuate, .luiie 26, 1854, Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, asked that Senator this aneetior : 

I would like to ask the Senator, if Congress repealed the fugitive slave law, would Massaehusetie 
exf^cuic the constitutional requirements, and send back to the South the absconding slarea? 

" Mr. SfMNKB. ])o you ask if I would send back slaves V 

" Mr. BuTLBK. Why, yes. 

" Mr. Slmnee. Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing? 

" Mr. KuTjjSR. Then you would not obey the Constitution Sir, standing here before tMl« tribc- 
r:ai, where you swore to support it, you rise and tell me that yon regard it the offi. e of a dog lo 
t.ipport it Yon stand in my presence, a coequal j^e^lator, and tell me it i« a dog'i office to «xeoo>e 
.!»' «J«nstitmion of the United States 

" Mr, BinoKs. I recognize no such obligation." 



29 

What obligation? No obligation to support the Constitution of the United 
States as it relates to the rendition of fugitive slaves. What exempted that Sena- 
tor from that obligalion * Had he not taken an oath to support the Constitution as 
a totality? What right had he to make any mental reservation? What right had 
he to except the fugitive slave law, or a provision of the Constitution which every 
man who swears to support it swears to sustain, to lender back fugitive slaves? Sir, 
if a violation of the oath, taken in the broad teims in which tlie Senator has al- 
ways taken it when he qualifted as a member of this body, had been by law made 
perjury, and the Senator had violated that oath, as he has violated it so often, and 
he had been arraigned on the charge of peijury before any enlightened and inde- 
pendent court, what would have been the judgment? 

Now, sir, I will proceed a little with the other Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. 
Wilson.] They are par nohile frairuiru I do not know, according to their ideas, 
which is the grandest and greatest. According to my own I do not know which is 
least, which is most false to the Constitution and to the loyalty that is justly due to 
their Government and to the Constitution and Union of these States. They come 
in here and make an exhibit of this almost daily that is aljhorrent to every man 
who has any moral principle. 

But, sir, the other Senator from Massachusetts, the chairman of the Committee 
on Military Affairs, the representative of war,' "horrid war," in the Senate, de- 
clared in a speech at Syracuse, New York, October 29, 1859: 

"I tell yon, fellow-citizens, the Harper's Ferry outbre.ik was the legitimate consequence of the 
wachinge of the Republican party." 

Sir, that is the truth, and it is a lesson which the Senator sought to inculcate; 
which every traitor who meditated the dissolution of the Union and the depriva- 
tion of the slave-owners of the South of the protection and guarantee which that 
instrument gave to their property — it was a lesson leading to an act which they all 
meditated. Sir, what can we think of a man who so boldly and defiantly anuoun- 
363 it! There was a murderous and treasonable raid by John Brown upon the 
Commonwealth of Virginia, carrying blood and violence and treason and crime into 
a peaceful community, far distant from his residence; and the Senator avows that 
this act was the legitimate result of the teachings, as every body knows that it wa«, 
of the Republican party. 

Mr. V/ILSON. Will the Senator allow me a word? 

Mr. DAVIS. I prefer you to wait until I get through. 

Mr. WILSON. J wish simply to say that the records of the Senate show that 
that statement is not correct. I never made any such assertion. Mr. Hunter once 
brought it up in the Senate, and I referred to the speech .which I actually made, in 
which I stated precisely the opposite doctrine. 

Mr. DAVIS. I accept the Senator's explanation. '"Iwithdraw that charge; but 
I will bring up another, and see what answer he will make to that. 

On the 'iOth day of November, 1859 — 

" A large and enlhusiasiic meeting of the citizens of this town [Nutick, Mass.ichuaetls] wai> 
calleti to consider the following resolutions : 

'•■Wheroiis resistance to tyrants is obedience to God; Therefore, 

" Iiesolv6<i, That it is the" highest duty of the slaves to resist their masters; and it is the right 
and duty of the people of the North to incite slaves to resistance and aid them in it." 

My information is that that Senator was present at this meeting when this reso- 
lution passed, and that it passed nemirie coutradicente, and the Senator's voice was 
not raised in remonstrance against the atrocity of the sentiment expressed in that 
resolution. 

Mr. WILSON. Does the Senator wish an explanation now ? 

Mr. DAVIS. Is it any denial? 

Mr. WILSON. 1 have to say siinply this: that was a meeting called by some 
anti-slaver}' men whom we denominate in our country as the "(jiarrison abolilion- 
ists." Some seven or eight hundred persons went to the meeting as lookers-on, and 
did not vote or disturb the meeting, or take any part in it. Probably not over 
eeven or eight men voted on that resolution, or had any part in it. Not one in 
twenty of those who were present had any sympathy with the meeting; but it was 
a meeting called by other persons, and they did not wish to interfere with it. Mj 
own views were fully expressed at the time in a letter denying any sympathy with 
it whatever, and in cocdemuation of it. 

Mr. Davis. I accept the Senator's:! explanation ; but I think he was at a very 
improper place, and in very bad conipany. [Laughter.] 

Now, Mr. President, I will say one word ta to negro inaurrflctions, and in relatioo 



30 

to the policy of the Government in arming and organizing negro soldiers. I have 
some knowledge of negro nature. I have studied it from my infancy. I know of 
no people that have kinder or more benevolent feelings toward a race whom they 
deem to be their inferiors than have the slavelioldera of Kentucky toward their 
slaves. I know of no slaveholder who would not imperil hisi life if it were neces- 
sary to defend his slave from wrong and violence. If to support this war in its just 
and proper conduct in the proper mode of carrying it on, slavery had fiillen as a 
necessary consequence, I know of no man in tiie State of Kentucky who is for the 
Union that would have made any complaint. It would have presented itself to 
them in this aspect: here is an alternative, the preservation of the Union or the 
overthrow of slaverj^ ; and my colleague of the other House, who owns about two 
hundred slaves, and every slaveholder'in the State who is a Union man, would have 
yielded his slaves just as he would any of his other property, to the exigencies of 
the war and to tlie just demands of the Government in carrying it on. Al! that we 
asked was thnt slaves should share the fate of other property in this war; that the 
war should not Se carried on for their defense nor for the destruction of the insti- 
tution. We be ieved that all policy to make slaves a component part of the Army 
would result disastrously to the Government and to the country, and I have no 
doubt whatever that this has proved true. But we protested aad will continue to 
protest agai ist making war upon the property of loyal people. 

Mr. President, I know the nature of slaves, of that population. There have be*>n 
co-ntemplated slave insurrections in Virginia; some in the State of Kentucky. "VTe 
all know the extent of the outrages that ensued in the insurrection of the slaves of 
San Domingo. ^ There is a general law in relation to the white and black races; the 
black race desires the white race; and whenever there' is an insurrection consum 
mated, or suppressed in its embryo, the leaders of the insurrection generally select 
in anticipation for themselves the handsomest and most attractive white women 
for their wives. That is a law of the race; and wherever there is an extensive in- 
surrection, and violence and passion and lust obtain the ascendent, the outrageous 
enormities that are and will be perpetrated by the black race are fearful and too 
horrid to narrate. Nevertheless, I will recite one that occurred on the Bayou 
Teche in western Louisiana. 

It was communicated to me by a citizen of one of the parishes on that bayou, 
a Mr. Carlin, a Spanish Creole, a loj-al man, a gentleman, a man of intelligence, and 
of as true integrity to the Government and the Union as there is in it." He had a 
son who had reached the years of manhood. He urged the noble and educated 
youth to take a position in the Army as a private, that he might learn the art of 
war and acquire the capacity for subordinate command. The young man did so. 
He served out his time, and at the end his father procured lum a second lieutenancy. 
He returned to Virginia to join his regiment and assume his command; but before 
he reached their rendezvous they had left for Gettysburg. He followed on, and 
reached Gettysburg during the protracted conflict. lie shouldered his musket, 
took his position as a private in the ranks, and there poured out his young life, it 
and all the bright hopes of a fond father were offered there upon the altar of his 
country. 

His father narrated to me this fact. There was a Mr. Bossiere, a Creole planter 
on the Bayou Teche, a man of wealth, of education, and of refinement. He was 
aged, was paralytic, and helpless. The march of armies drove from his neighbor- 
hood all his friends, leaving him and his motherless daughter exposed and unpro- 
tected. A nfgro soldier wearing the uni/orm of the United States came to this de- 
fenseless house, and there, in the presence of the powerless father, violated the 
person of his daugliter. 

Sir, that is one only of the many and untold and most horrid incidents that have 
no doubt characterized this war. Shame and ruin, mute despair, and blasted hopes 
of happiness have silenced the voice forever of most of the victims of such diabolVeal 
lust. Mr. President, could there be a stronger case than this appealing to man- 
hood — man the natural protector of woman — to turn from the policy that brings 
such heartrending enormities? But, sir, such instances as these v/ould be brought 
up in vain to cause to relent the fanatical, fierce, frenzied and perverted hearts and 
souls of the Senators from Massachusetts. At such recitations they would turn with 
the sardonic smile of fiends from the white woman's direst woe, from the ruin of all 
that is innocent and lovely in the most cultivated and attractive of the sex of the 
white race. 

Already it is said that the white population in some of the southern States where 
the negroes have been enlisted are fleeing to places of concealment and safety. The 
negroes know these hiding-places, and the secret ways and paths to them, and they 



31 

are organized into the Army, and it is boasted that they are already upon the hunt 
uf their victims. I can fancy the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] in a 
position where he -would feel something of the pride and the glory and honor of war 
according to the scale and dignity of his courage and great soul. It would be as 
Colonel of one of those black regiments, those fiends inflamed by infernal passions, 
and leading them on to hunt out, to murder, or to bring to a fate more horrible than 
murder, these fleeing and helpless women and children. 

But, sir, I have something more to say to that Senator. "When I took ray seat in 
this body I found him always the most forward and most reckless assailant of proper- 
ty in negroes. According to his jhdgment, I had the audacity to remonstrate against 
a series of systematic measures which he introduced to assail and destroy that 
property. 1 did this because of the great interests of my constituents in it, and 
because of the foul injustice and iniquity of the policy generally. I never could say 
a word by way of remonstrance, argument, reason, or expostulation against those 
measures without receiving the coarse and the insulting rebuke of that Senator. 

I recollect on one occasion he called me to order for speaking treasonable words, 
as he assumed. He was required by the occupant of the chair to reduce the words 
to writing. He recited them — I do not recollect whether he reduced them to writ- 
ing or not — but I pronounced the words as he reduced them to writing, or stated 
them, to be untrue and false in fact. He called upon the reporter. The reporter 
read his report of my words, and it corroborated my version and contradicted that 
of the Senator, and then the matter dropped. 

Sir, the Senator has been a sort of geueral whipper-in, not only of the Black Re- 
publican party, but of the whole Senate. He has assumed to rebuke, to chide, to 
domineer, to bully Senators at his pleasure, without much regard to their political 
position. Sir, I think there ought "to be inscribed on his most impudent front the 
words, " The self-constituted gagger of the Senate." * 

Mr. WILSON. I call the Senator to order. 

Mr. DAVIS resumed: ' 

On the 5th of January I submitted to the senate a series of resolutions chiefly 
condemnatory of the abuses and usurpations of power by the Executive of the 
United States. The member from Massachusetts, on the 8th, moved a resolution 
for my expulsion from the Senate, basing it on the 13th one of my series, which 
came up for consideration on the 31th. T?hat Senator opened the debate by read- 
ing a speech in support of his resolution. I do not know who wrote the speech for 
him, but the Senate will bear me witness he read it very badlj'. It was replet* 
with gross personalities and vulgar ribaldry, some specimens of which I will read. 
"Having," says that member, " a reasonable degree of confidence in my own pow- 
ers of endurance, I entered upon the task of reading these resolves aimed at the 
President of the United States, the members of his Cabinet, the majority of these 
Chambers, the laws of Congress, the proclamations and orders of the Commander- 
in-chief of our army, and of all who are clothed with authority to administer the 
Government of the United States. I groped through the mass of vituperative accu- 
sations with mingled emotions of indignation and pity." 

"In this farrago of spleen and malice, the Chief Magistrate, his associates and 
supporters, struggling to preserve the life of the nation, are accused, arrayed, and 
■ condemned," 

^The Senator must not trifle here. He must recollect that he is in the Senate of 
the United States, and not at a bnrbecue in Kentucky. Senators cannot fail here 
to comprehend the import and meaning of the words and phrases introduced in these 
resolutions, and they know that these are not the words and phrases of statesmen, 
but of babbling fools." 

These are a few specimens of the spirit and scurrilous language in which the 
member from Massachusetts opened his attack upon me. I replied at considerable 
length, not only endeavoring to defend myself, but to carry the war into Africa. 
The Senator rejoined, and after this manner: 

"Mr. President: It is not my purpose to notice in detail the illogical, rambling, and incoherent 
■utterances that tlie Senate has been forced to listen to for near three hours. Seldom has the 
Senate of the United States been compelled to listen to such a farrago of hruiulity, indecenoy, 
treason and fuhehood."' 'He (the Senator from Kentucky) rises here in the Senate of the 
United States, flippantly speaks of States and public men, bringing against Stales and public 
men false and vituperative accusations, on authority of what he has lieard and what he has been 
informed, swift to accuse, fierce, bitter, and unrelenting in denunciation, reckless alike of facts 
tji«l should govern honorable men,'' &c. 

He then proceeds to charge me with having violated the proprieties that govern 
honorable men and gentlemen, What does that member know of these proprieti-e? 



32 

When did he ever practice them ? He speaketh of things of which he knoweth 
nothing. 

In my reply to that member I alluded to the fact that on the day of the first 
battle of Bull Run he was applied to by the father of a gallant young soldier, who 
had fallen mortally wounded, to aid him to get the son off the field, and that he 
declined to render any assistance. In his rejoinder the Senator from Massachusetts 
turned to me and asked this question : "Did the Senator manufacture that libelous 
accusation?" I answered, "It was told me by a soldier." He added: "The Sen- 
ator was told so. Sir, whoever told the Senator so told him an unmitigated and 
unqualified lie, that had not a semblance or shadow of truth in it." 

Sir, the soldier who related that incident to me was Major McCook, deceased, late 
a paymaster in the service of the United States, and the father of General Alexan- 
der McCook and brothers, all of them having joined the army, and two having 
fallen in the service. I am informed, on good authority, that he communicated 
the same fact to several gentlemen in this eity when he brought back the re- 
mains of hid son. Will the member from Massachusetts, in th^ presence of the 
Senate, deny that he knew on the day, and after the repulse of our army that 
young McCook was lying dangerously wounded near Cenlerville, or somewhere 
betwef^n the battlefield and the fortifications around Washington City? Will he 
deny that he saw McCook, the father, on that day ? Will he deny that that father 
requested him to give assistance in getting his son into an ambulance or some other 
conveyance, and that he declined, saying that he " had a wife and children to care 
for," or words to that effect? Whatever that Senator may answer to those special 
interrogatories. Major McCook stated the fact to me, and I have no doubt to many 
others, not in confidence, but publicly, and in terms of reproach to the member 
from Massachusetts. That soldier and father is now in his grave, but when living 
his life was illustrated by spotless truth and honor, and his statement of any fact 
could not be shaken by any denial or asseveration of the living Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts.* 

The word of that Senator stands discredited in the public journals of the country. 
In March, 1862, he entered into a debate in the Senate, in which he took ground in 
fftvor of discontinuing further recruiting, and for the discharge of 150,000 soldiers 
from the army. The New York Herald published a summary of his remarks at the 
time. Some months afterwards that Senator made a speech at Newton, in which 
he was reported to have said in reference to this synopsis of his speech in the Sen- 
ate: "There is not only no truth, but there is not a shadow of truth on which to 
to lay the foundation of the assertion." "I have always maintained that Govern- 
ment wanted more men. So much, Mr. Chairman, in explanation of the false posi- 
tion which the New York Herald has sought to place me in, and which other pa- 
pers have echoed." These two denials of the Senator are very similar, and equally 
positive; but as to the latter the Herald nails that Senator to the counter, by quot- 
ing from his speech these words: 

Mr. Wilson, of Massaclmsetts— T^e Senator from Maine the other day proposed to redtice 
the number of men authorized by law d(wn io_five hundred thouxand. I agree with him in 
that. SLill we have uot been able to do it. It was suggestid also that we oxight to »top re- 
cruiting. J agree to that. I have over and over again been to the War Office and urged 
upon the department to stop recruiting in every part of the countin/. We have had the prom- 
ise that it shoiil.l be done, yet every day, in different parts of the country, we have accounts of 
men l)ein? raised and brouglit forth to fill up the ranks of regiments. The papers tell u#that 
in Tenni-ssee and other parts of the country where our armies move, we are fUling up the ranks 
of the army. / belitve we have to day one hundred and fi'ty thousand more men under the 
pay of the Government than we need or can well use. 1 have not a do^iht of it ; and I think 
it ought to be cheake'i. I think the War Department ought to ismie peremptorii orders for- 
bidding the enlistment of another soldier into the volunteer force of the United States until 
the time shall come when we need them. We can obtain them any time when we need them. 
— Washington Globe, March 29, 1862, part 2, page 1,417. 

*A gentleman of the highest character for truth, integrity, and honor, has given me this in- 
formation. He went out from Washington to the neighborhood of Bull Run on the day of the 
first latlle In the vicinity of Oenterville he came upon Major McCook, now deceased, who 
informed him that his son, a youth, had been overtaken by some rebel cavalry in a>i adjoining 
field, who required him to surrender, and he answering that he would not, th-y had flred at 
and wounded him; and he had gotten him over the fence into the road. That Si-nator Wilson, 
of Massachusetts, had just passed along, and being requested by him to assist him to get hie 
son into a house near by that he might be eared for. This he refused, saying that he had a 
wife and children, and must take care of himself, and hurried on but was stdl in view. McCook 
•spoke of the matter with a good deal of feeling against Wilson. This gentleman then helped 
McCook to filace his son in the house, and afterAvsrds into a wagon, which started for Washtna- 
ton, bui before it reached its destination he died. The name of this gentleman is Dr. J. J. 
Jones, of Louisiana, at present sojourning in this city. I have seen no one who has been able to 
inform me, whether the time of the member from Massachusetts, when he hurried away from the 
dying young soldier for Washington, was equal tp "Flora Temple's" best. 



33 

But I concede I was misinformed, and erred in my reply to the Senator, as to -the 
order of some facts in his military career, -which it is very important should be cor- 
rectly recorded in history. He informs us, and no doubt truly, that it was not 
lefore^ but after the first battle of Bull Run, that he raised a regiment in Massa- 
chusetts. That his earliest visit to the field was some two days after the battle of 
Blackburn's Ford, and veiy shortly before the battle of Bull Run, and close by. 
He had heard that some Massachusetts soldiers had been wounded, and repaired 
to their camp to nurse them. A very praiseworthy object, and it being impossible 
to suppose that he liad less fitness for it than his present engagements, he should 
have continued lo nurse the soldiers. He does not deny that after he had raised 
his regiment a grand pageant was got up on Boston common, in honor of it and 
himself; and to stimulate his warlike ardor, a very eloquent and stirring address 
was made to him by ooe of the most accomplished orators, not only of Boston, but 
America. He no doubt struggled and swelled to mate himself in his reply to the 
^ grandeur of the occasion, and the eloquence of the other speaker. We have all 
heard how the celebrated Capt. Bobadil proposed to use up with a few men a very 
large opposing army, I suppose that his work was tame and slow compared with 
the rapid and wholesale destruction wilyh which the het-o of Natick proclaraated to 
overwhelm all rebuldom. Near the close of his third speech against me, the Sena- 
tor brought into this Chamber "Canterbury Hall," and spoke of the introduction 
of a it^rce upon its boards. Now, I suggest to the Senator, that if he will advertise 
for 1^33 particular evening when he will present himself on the Canterbury's 
boards, to recite his Boston common's war speech, and will belt himself again to 
that long sword, and take a few preliminary turns on the front part of the stage, 
with his martial strut of eighteeu in-ches a pace, accompanied by his peeuliar hitch 
and jerk, and will then give his reading of the speecJa, suiting the action to the 
word, according to his own conception, he will have not only the largest audience, 
but will produce the baldest andflatest farce that has ever yet signalized Canterbury, 
or any other boards. 

The neophiie Colonel s<arted from Boston for the seat of war by this city, with 
the most redundr.nt stock of courage that warrior ever took aboard; but it ebbed 
in a geometrical ratio as he approximated the enemy, and even before he reached 
Washington, the last vestage of it was gone. He had been close to the battle of 
Bull Run, and the breeze had then wafted to his olfactories the odor of " villianoua 
Baltpetre." He had heard the thunders of battle and seen its murky incense offered 
up to Mars. When he got near to its scene, instinctive dread came over him, and 
■it was reproduced to his memory and imagination like a terrible apparition. 1 
heard a member of the other House, from South Carolina, announce in stento- 
rian voice that he was born a stranger to fear; one of his colleagues immediately 
Baid to me, "I was not born exactly there, but in that neighborhood." The mem- 
ber from Massachusetts was born far away from both localities^ and had no stomach 
to go back to Bull Run again. He consequently doffed his sword and eagles, but 
had none of the fussy pomp with which he had assumed them; and when, or how, 
or where Ihey became teparated, no one but a few of the initiated ever knew. 

Throughout his three speeches against me, the member from Massachusetts made 
constant proffer of himself as a born and practiced scavenger. In the third one he 
compared me to a fractious little wife who very much berated her husband, and on 
its being brought to his attention, he remarked, it seemed to do the little thing a 
great deal of good, but himself no hurt. He would never be suspected of being 
that husband, in whose conduct there was a forbearance and decorum th^t he could^ 
never hf. supposed to be able to approach. In. his rejoinder to my reply, he char- 
acterized it as "the twitterings of a cock snowbird." That member had never been 
associated in my mind with the idea of a bird; if the fact had been otherwise, it 
would doubtless have been some most unclean bird. But I will tell him what did 
eome up spontaneously in my mind when I looked upon him. It was "Jeremiah 
Leathers," alias "Jeremiah Colbnth," alias "Henry Wilson." He denounced me as 
"pro-slavery drunk," intimated that I was frightened by his resolution for my expul- 
sion, and alluded to my "(courage oozing out of my fingers' ends;" and also that it was 
with me as with Falstaff, " discretion being the belter part of valor." I think that 
member must himself be about convinced that he has neither «a/or nor discretion. 
It has been said that Bob Acres' courage oozed out of his fingers' ends. The Senator 
denied that he run from the battle of Bull Run, admit'led that he walked several 
miles, and says he was then taken up b}- a friend in his buggy. I have no doubt 
that in that three or four miles he did the talie&t vtalking and made the best time of 
the war; and that what courage he had had previously, oozed out at some other 
place than his fingers' ends ; and wjien he crossed the Potomac, he was a fitter sub 
2 



34 

ject to be laved in that river than was the dirty soldier of the Peninsula in the 
Gaudiana. 

He dared me to read my series of resolutions at the head of any regiment in the 
army, and said if I attempted it I would be hung on the highest tree. Well, 1 will 
make this proposition to the Senator. Let him get from his master at the White 
House, an order that he, or any other, or as many oth^- of their champions as they 
may select, and I, shall have safe conduct to all our armies, and the soldiers sliall 
have perfect liberty to listen to a discussion of those resolutions by u9, and to form 
their free and independent judgment and action upon them, and I will risk the 
hanging. I have confidence in the citizen soldiery of the United States, in their 
devotion to the Constitution and the rights and liberties which it guaranties to 
them. The member pronounces a foul libel upon them when he says, that if I were 
■ to ap]iear before them to plead that great cause, ofmyself, of them, of our country- 
men, and of mankind, that they would murder me for attempting to bear an hum- 
ble part in the great work of their restoration. 

But whilst the mind of the member is running upon hazzaidous undertakings, I 
will make this proposition to him: let him go to Kentucky, and there set up his 
negro-stealing operations, denounce the fugitive slave laws of Congress in the gross 
and treasonable language which he so often uses in this Chamber, and organize and 
machinate to defeat their execution, as lie has long been doing in Massachusetts, 
and what fate would await him? He would be consigned to the penitentiary and 
put to work in a cobbler's stall. His crimes would make him infamous TliMabor 
would be only to fill up his time and to mitigate his punishment by divertmg his 
thoughts from the unbroken contemplation of the guilt of his soul. The people of 
Kentucky honor labor and laborers. That class, in every country, constitute mainly 
its physical and moral strength, and its greatest glory. A laborer of plain good 
sense, morals and piinciples, of proper sensibilities and deference to others, and of 
upright and decorous walk in life, is one of the truest of gentlemen, and there are 
millions of them among our countrymen. They are so estimated by all the people 
of Kentucky, and their regret is %hat a merciful administration of criminal justice 
requires that felons in their punishment should be allowed to dishonor labor. 

As that Senator spoke his speech in this Chamber, he annunciated that nine tenths 
of the people of the loyal States, including Kentucky, would condemn my resolu- 
tions; but, in the Globe, he changed it to "an overwhelming majority." By what 
authority does he speak on this or any other point for the loyal States generally, 
and particularly for Kentucky ? He has but one warrant, and that is his unequaled 
assurance. He is a most rapid census-taker on this subject, but I think it will turn 
out that he is yet more false. 

In one of his three speeches there is this passage: "But the Senator from Ken- 
tucky reproaches Massachusetts for her legislation intended to protect her own citi- 
zens against the inhuman provisions of tliat fugitive slave law, whose provisions so 
gladden his heart and fill his capacious brain. The Senator mounts his desk and 
reads to the Senate that infamous enactment that has brought so much shame and 
dishonor upon our country in the face of the Christian and civilized world." So 
great is one of the infirmities of the member that he cannot relate truly an incident 
occurring in his own presence, and of the Senate. Being fatigued, I reclined on 
my desk. It was not my denh, but the Senator himself that I mounted. 

His third speech appears in the Globe materially changed, and a good deal im- 
proved from what it was as he delivered it. Some superior workman to himself 
has certainly been pruning and polishing it down. He assumed that I had warped 
away from my resolutions, and then added: "I say with these modifications and 
denials, the resolutions become simply a farce, one that they would be ashamed to 
put upon the boards at Canterbury liall. The whole country will launch its gibes 
and its jeers at them. They are nothing, and they mean nothing. 'Revolt does npt 
mean revolt.' The taking of Government into your own hands does not mean it. 
Calling a National Convention to exercise this power does,not mean anything only 
a pamphlet, and some oZcZ ^Mniernominated for President to be beaten.^ 'Asub- 
Mdized army' is not a subsidized army. I do not know that the negro janazaries 
are to be denied. I suppos' these colored troops stand as negro janazaries. But, 
sir, I accept all these disclaimer:-. I do not say that the Senator in drafting them 
was very brave, and that as he comes before the Senate and country with them his 
knees smote together, or that his courage oozed out of -his fingers' ends; but cer- 
tainly I think the Senator has taken Falstaff's advice, that 'discretion is the better 
part of valor.' The resolutions, as / say they mean nothing, are nothing, and be- 
come a mere farce, and /drop them and withdraw the resolution." 

Mr. President, the member from Massachusetts is fortified by a cordon of irapu- 



35 

dence and mendacity tbat make him impregnable and unapproacLable. He, him- 
self, fabricates modi.ficaf.ionx, denials, and explanations of my resolutions in general 
and indefinite term's, falsely imputes them to ine, and declares that he accepts them, 
and then withdraws the resolution for my expulsion., 

I will read from the Congressional Globe what occurred in the Senate on the 8th 
January when the member from Massachusetts moved my expulsion: 

"Mr. "WILSON. Mr. President, I rise for the purpose of submitting areeolution of a personal 
nature. I find on my desk a series of resolutions introduced into the Senate on the 5th instant by 
the Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. Davis.] Those resolutions class the Government and its sup- 
porters 

"The VICE PRESIDENT. The Senator will first submit his resolution. 

"Mr. WIL'^ON Very well; I submit my resolution. 

"The VICE PRESIDENT. The resolution will be read for the information of the Senate. 

" The Secretary read the resolution, as follows : 

"Whereas the Hon. Garrktt Davis, a Senator from the State of Kentucky, did on the 5lh day 
of January, A. D. IS&i, introduce into the Senate of the United States a series of resolutions in 
which, among other things, it is declared that ' the people North ought to revolt against their war 
leaders and take this great matter into their own hands,' thereby meaning to incite the people of 
the United States to revolt against the President of the United States and those in authority who 
support him in the proscution of the war to preserve, protect, and defend tlie Constitution and tlie 
Union, and to take the prosecution of the war into their own hands : Therefore, 

"5e it resolved. That the said Gakrett Davis has, by the introduction of the resolutions afore- 
said, been guilty of advising the people of the United States to treasonable, insurrectionary, and 
rebellious action against the Government of the United States, and of a gross violation of the privi- 
leges of the Senate; for which cause he is hereby expelled. 

"The PRE^IDINfl OFFICER, (Mr. Anthony in the chair.) Will the Senate give unanimous 
consent for the consideration of the resolution at the present time ? 

" Mr. WIL-^ON. I do not propose to call it up for action at the present time, but I intend to do 
so at some time hereafter, for I desire to record my vote upon it. I have offered this resolution 
without consultation with any Senator, on my own responsibility. Often I heard the men who or- 
ganized this treasonable rebellion tlireaten the dissolution of the Union, and make treasonable 
appeals to the country, and when this bloody revolution opened I resolved that if I ever heard in 
this ' hamber more treasonable utterances, I would move the expulsion of the Senator uttering 
words of treason. These are not words uttered in debate^but they are in the Senator's resolutions. 
He tells the people, he asks the Senate to tell the people of the country, the loyal men of the North 
and the rebels of the South, to revolt; yes, sir, to revolt against their war leaders, to take affairs 
into their own hands, to elect delegates to a national convention, to stop the war. No proposition 
was ever made in the Senate of the United States, not even by the conspirators who organized thif 
slaveholder's rebellion, more unconstitutional, seditious, and rebellious. ' If the people follow bis 
advice, if they revolt against the President, Congress, the Supreme Court, the ' war leaders,' if they 
take the power into their own hands, if they go into national convention, a convention unknown to 
the Constitution and the laws, assume authority to close the war, and adjust the terms of peace in 
defiance of the Government ol the United states, war, civil war, is inevitable, and the loyal States 
will be plunged into the fire .and blood of internal strife. Stripped of its verbiage, the Senator's 
proposition means this, nothing less. 

'• Mr. DAVIrt. Mr. President, the resolution of the Senator from Massachusetts presents a gar- 
bled version of my resolution. It does not embody my resolution so as to express its sense; and 
the inferences that that Senator draws from it are not authorized by its language or its spirit. Sir, 
what did that honorable Senator admit within the la.-t two years? He admitted that when his own 
State was in a state of rebellion against the United States, he sympathized with that rebellion. 

"Mr. WILSON No, sir 

" Mr. DA VI8. I think the Senator did. Mr. WILSON. No, sir 

" Mr. D AVI^. I interrogated that Senator and his colleague in relation to their course and sym- 
pathies in the Burns case that occurred in Boston some years ago. 'The galled jade winces:' 'my 
withers are un wrung.' When the gentleman speaks of treasonaud disloyalty to his Government, 
tie speaks from the recesses of his own heart, not mine. 

" He puts his own Interpretation on the resoluton that I offered. That resolution I abide by; 
but I deny that its authorizes the conclusion the .Senator from Massachusetts is forcibly trying to 
deduce from it; far from it. It however strikes the Senator on this point: he is here an advocate 
for the inttrference of the military iwwer at elections, to destroy iheir freedom, and to appoint to 
office by the bayonet instead ol the free suffrages of ihe people. Now, my resolution— its purport, 
its meaning, its spirit— is, that the people shall rise at the polls and talie the power of this Govern- 
ment and of this country, that properly belongs to them, there, at that constitutional forum, into 
their own hands, by peaceful convention ; that the people North and the people South shall both do 
it, and repudiate th' ir war leaders— leaders who desire a continuance of this terrible struggle, and 
who are opposed to its peaceful settlement. Sir, I .give ihem that counsel in the resolution com- 
plained of; I give them that counsel here everywhere. The thought of mutiny or disaffection in 
the Army was not in my mind. How is it with the Senator? If I recollect aright, he stated that 
his sympathies were with Burns in the Massachusetts insurrection. 

"Mr. WILSON. Never. 

"Mr. DAVIS. Were you against his rescue ? 

"Mr WILSON. I had nothing to do with it; and had no knowledge of it until after it trans- 
pired. I was not in my own State at the time. 

"Mr. DAVIS. Did you ever condemn that insurrection? Did you ever do anything to put it 
down — its spirit? 

" Mr. WILSON. There was no occasion ; it was put down quickly. 

" Mr. DAVIS. Did you ever do or say anything to assert the authority of the laws .tnd of the 
United .states in that insurrection? Did you ever express any condemnation of it ? No, sir ; no. 

't Mr. H AKLAN. Mr. President, I rise to a question of order. I desire to know if there is any 
subject before the Senate. 

" The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no subject before the Senate. The Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts did not ask for the present consideration of his resolution. , 

" Mr. HAKLAN. I move then that the Senate do now adjourn. [' Oh, no ! '] " 



36 

It Id thus seen that at the moment -when the resolution for my expulsion was 
sprung in the Senate by the member from Massachusetts, 1 charged him with garb- 
ling that resolution of my series on which he based his, and giving an unaulhor- 
rzed and false interpretation to mine. I protested that neither its language or 
spirit meant any appeal to violence, or any other remedy than a peaceable conven- 
tion to be elected by the people of all the States, north and south. 

On the 11th January, I called up tlie resolution of expulsion, and at my instance 
it was made the special order for the 13th. 

On the 13th of January I again called up the i-esolulion, when the Senator from 
Massachusetts r<-ad his opening speech. I replied, and he rejoined ; and then the 
subject was postponed until the mori'ow. On the 18th of January I ag^in called 
up the resolution, when it was referred by the Senate to the jiidiciarj- committee, 
which on tiie 25tli reported it back, asking to be discharged from its consideration. 
Thereupon I moved to make it the speeal order for the morrow, when it came up. 
Mr. Howard (of Michigan) rose in its support. Before he proceeded, I asked his 
courtesy to permit the Secretary to read a note which I had addressed to the chair- 
man of the judiciary com.mittee, in these words: 

'' WAsniNGTON OiTT, JamMvy 20, 18C4. 

" Sir : I was taken wholly by surprise at the presentation of the resolution to expel me from the 
Senate. I had not expected, or even thought of the nesolution which was made the ground of tliat 
proceeding, or any one, or the whole of the series producing any such movfment. I therefore 
avowed, in substance, distinctly, that the mover of the resolution for my expulsion interpreted the 
resolution on which he based his erroneously and injuriously to me. That in offering those resolu- 
tions I had no purpose to invite the the Army to mutiny, or the people to sedition, or any violence 
■whatever ; but it was to exhort the whole people. North and South, to terminate the war by a con- 
stitutional settlement of their difficulties and reconstruction of the Union ; and that the series of 
resolutions would not fairly admit of any other construction ; all of which I now reaffirm. 

'•I am prompted to make this disavowal again, in this form, to place it upon the records of the 
Senate, it having as yet only appeared in the reports of its debates. And with this note, which I 
request you to lav bciore the committee, I submit the case on my part to its action. 

"Tours, Ac. GAKKETT DAVIS. 

''■ The Chairman q/ We Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate. 

" Mr. HOWARD. Mr. President, the temper exhibited in the letter of the honorable member 
from Kentucky just read from the Chair seems to indicate certainly to my mmd a regret that his 
resolutions havw placed him in this unpleasant predicament; and I desire now to say to the Sena- 
tor from Kentucky that, if such be the fact.nnd he desins leave to withdraw the resolutions which 
are the foundation of the rt-solution of the Senator from M:issachuselt8 for his expulsion, I shall 
certainly i>e very happy to giant him ihe leave so far as I am concerned, and I presume that will 
bs the univt-rswl sense of the Senate. 

"Mr. DAVIS. The Snnator from Michigan has paused, I suppose, that I may respond to his 
suggestion, (which being assented to by him") I added, having declared generally the meaning of 
those resolutions. I adhere to them. I will never withdraw them, never, never. 

" Mr. HOWARD. Under the circumstances, sir, before proceeding with the remarks which I 
liid intended to make upon this subject, I will offer an amendment to the resolution of the Sen- 
ator from Massacluisetts. which I now s<-nd to the OhHir. 

"The VICK PRESIDENT. The amendment will be read. 

"The Chief < lerk read the amendment, which was to strike out of the resolution the word " ex- 
pelled," and insert in lieu thereof the words "censured by the Senate." 

"The VICE PRESIDENT. The question will be on agreeing to the amendment." 

The Senator moved to substitute cenmre for expulsion, and made an elaborate 

speech. 

I liave exhibited all the modi.ficationn, denials, and di'<claimerii which I made, ana 
which the member from Massachusetts says so far mollified him as to move him to 
■withdraw his resolution of expulsio.n. It is shown that my modifications, dfiiinh, 
and disclaimers were simply a denunciation of him for having garbled my resolution 
and given it a false &x\A forced interpretation ; and a protest, that neither its spirit 
or language would authorize his conclusions; that the one on which he based his 

. resolution' of expulsion, or any, or all the series, did not invite to any mutiny of the 
army, sedition of the people, or other violent remedy for the public abuses and 
wrongs which I denounced. I disclaimed both %h^ fact and the intention of recom- 
mending any remedy of violence and revolution, and avowed the potent and 
8 jecificone. a national convention of all the States. 
' I assumed distinctly this ground, and the whole of it, at the moment when the 
Senator first launched his charge against me. If it was such a surrender by me, as 
he now claims it to be, why did he not accept it when it was made, and then ask to 
withdraw his resolution of expulsion? Why did he continue to press it, and per- 
mit it to remain before the Senate for twenty days longer, consuming its time and 
obstructing the public business? Two Senators [Mr. Howard of Michigan, and Mr. 
Morrill of Maine] came to his assistance in the debate. Messrs Johnsox of ]\Iary- 
hnd, Hale of New Hampshire, Lane of Indiana, Fessenuen of M.aine, ANTnoxv of 
Rhode Island, and Fo.ster of Connecticut, in debate, opposed the movemeiit against 
me. The Senator had boasted on the introduction of his resolution, that it was his 



37 

own act, and without consultation with a single Senator. _ On the 27th January, 
Ihe fact was revealed to him that in the demise of his resolution he would be nearly 
in as lean a minority as he was at its birth. It was then that the instinctive m^g- 
nanhnlty of a little, malignant and cowardhj spirit asserted its dominion over him, 
and he determined to withdraw it. He came into the Senate the next day with the 
deliberate and final purpose to withdraw it: he rose for that object; had the bare- 
ness to utter against me another of his seullioiily speeches, and at its close did 
withdraw it. This was done with the unanimous concurrence of the Senate, 
the body being satisfied that the movement should Rcver have been made. But 
that Senator, in the plenitude of his arrogance, seems almost unconscious that he 
had obtruded this matter upon the Senate, and thereby made it their business ; and 
he treats it as his own personal affair, and the Senate as the machinery with which 
he was managing it according to his own will and pleasure, "/acce/ji these dis- 
claimers." "/say, then, they (my resolutions) )n£-a»t 7ioi/nM£r, are nothing, and be- 
come a mere farce. 1 drop them and withdraw theS-esolution." Brainless and impu- 
dent simpleton ! to suppose that he was regarded or thought of in the matter at all, 
except so far as he was constantly obtruding himself upon the attention of the 
Senate. Had he been silent, he would soon have been forgotten. 

But, as he had his third speech printed in the Congressional Globe, he dropped 
out ®f it " Canterbury Hall," and "some old hunker candidate for the presidency" 
he changed into " some respectable conservative." But that Senator having brought 
Canterbury Hall into this Chamber, he shall not give so summary and quiet an 
exit to it. * I have heard of a great many respectable people, members of Congi-ess, 
soldiers, strangers and citizens patronizing that theatre; and the most damaging 
fact against its respectability that had reached my ears, is, that the member from 
Massachusetts was one of its patrons. I have do doubt that curiosity and assurance 
propelled him occasionally into the boxes, but, from his reputation, that his distinc- 
tive tastes generally prompted him to seek more congenial company, of both sexes 
and colors, in the upper gallery. But were I to make a suggestion on this point to 
the managers of the Canterbury, it would be, that they improve the respectability 
of their establishment by excluding him from it wholly, pit, boxes, and gallaries. 

But my appeal to the bod}' of the people of all the States, North and South, to 
meet in National Convention and stop this bloody and desolating war, and to re- 
establish the great principles of concession and compromise, and the powers, rights, 
liberties and privileges reserved to the people and States respectively, upon which 
Washington and his associates had based our blended system of National and State 
Governments, is what appals the member from Massachusetts. The thought of such 
p. movement makes him rave like a mad dog in the presence of water. In hie 
pluenzy he declares that the assembling of such a convention would be treason, 
horrid treason; and if it should attempt to exercise any powers belonging to the 
Government of the United States, it would be the duty of the President to arrest! 
to imprison! to try! to convict! to condemn! and ha7ig! ihe members of thai convention 
for treason! Blood and thunder! what a swelling clim.ax of military justice, mov- 
ing along in all its dread and stately steps, and the whole to be performed by one 
public functionary, and in punishment of the exercise of the undoubted right of the 
sovereign power of the eOuntpy, the people of the United States, to perform the 
greatest and most beneficient act within the competency of mortals. The people of 
all the States, calling a convention to represent their unlimited political sovereignty 
and power, and one of the most base and puny of presidential tools hurling against 
it such senseless threats! It associates the groveling courtier calling upon Canute 
to say to the sea, "thus far shall thy proud waves come but no farther." The om- 
nipotent people, when they will it, can put up and pud down presidents, institu- 
tions, and governments. AH are of their creation, and live and move by their suf- 
ferance, and obey their behests, when they are true to themselves. The government 
officials are their servants, not their masters. Such is the theory and the condition 
of practical constitutional libertj'. The work of restoration and reconstruction can 
only be performed by the great agency of a National Convention. It is equally 
necessary for the North and the South. It must clear away the vast mass of debris 
and rubbish that the rebels, and the destructives, who hold power, have heaped 
upon our entire system, and reconstruct and restore the Federal Constitution and 
laws of Congress, and the State constitutions and laws, the entire Government and 
the Union as they were. If the people prove unequal to this work their destiny is 
certain ; it is a military despotism and a master. 

[Note. — The portion of this speech between the point where Senator Wilson 
called me to order and here, was cut off bj' his question of order being sustained. 
He had been permitted to pour out upon me falsehood and; scurrility in three long 
speeches without interruption. G. D.J 



38 

After being called to order by Senator Wilson, and the question of order being sus- 
tained by the Senate, Mr. DAVIS resumed : 

Mr. Prertident, 1 will forego the further personal notice which I had intended to 
take of the Senator from Massachusetts. I felt that I had an account to settle with 
him, and it was my purpose to have a full settlement; but I acquiesce iu the judg- 
ment of the Senate, and I will now proceed to the legitimate conclusion of my speech, 
the terms of wliich 1 suppose will be literally in order. Befoie which I will set the 
Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Doolitile] right on a few points of fact. The Senator 
from Massacliusetts opened the debate on the resolution for my expulsion in a writ- 
ten speech, full of personal invectives and coarse abuse. I replied at length, but 
made no other speech. The Senator immediately rejoined, yet more ofiVnsively. 
Some days afterward the Senator withdrew his resolution, but, before doing so, 
made another speech fraught with gross personalities. I had prepared a summary 
from the Senator's speeches of his many attacks upon me personally, and intended to 
square the account. The Senate have cut me off from that privilege, and I think 
have done me injustice ; but I must submit to its judgment, and will conclude my 
remarks. 

Mr. President, the people of Massachusetts, as a whole, have alwa^-sbeen strongly 
marked. Intellectual, energetic, active, latently brave, arrogant, conceited, inquisi- 
tive, meddlesome, not satisfied to manage their own business but ever trying to 
take charge of other people's, communicative yet secretive, alert, inventive, covetous, 
selfish, practical in business, ideal in doctrine, rational and skeptical in religion, with 
a moral sense consisting rather of habit than sentiment, swaying from one extreme 
opinion to anotlier, and in all dogmatical, intolerant, fanatical, persecuting, and cruel ; 
and yet her people cheri^h and hug to their bosom all their peculiarities, though 
many of them are revolting deformities. 

It is seen from this sketch that her characteristics are strikingly and extensively 
mixed, giving efficiency at the same time for great mischief and great good. Yet 
no State of the Union, and few communities of her numbers in any age, have pro- 
duced a larger aggregate of mind or more numerous or higher sppcimens of indi- 
vidual men. At the era of the Revolution she gave, not' only to the colonies 
but to mankind, Franklin, the Adamses Hancock, Quinc}', Warren, Preseott, and 
Copley; in the succeeding generation, King, John Quincy Adams, Story, and Par- 
sons, Whittimore, Whitney, Bowditch ; and at a later day, Everett, Davis, Choate, 
Winthrop, and Gushing, Shaw, Parker, and the Curtises, Hilliard, Hillard, and 
Thomas, jPrescott, Bancroft, and Motley, Longfellow and Bryant, Perkins and Healy, 
Morse, Story the sculptor, and Morton, and a host of others who have shed unfad- 
ing luster not only upon their own names but upon America. High ■ above all of 
them, that product of New Hampshire, and development of Massachusetts, is the 
intellectual giant, Daniel Webster, who, as a constitutional lawyei-, Senator, and 
Secretary, is without a peer, [n Plato, Bacon, Burke, and Wi-bster, man made his 
grandest development of pure intellect; while oratory and statesmanship have had 
their highest illustrations in Demosthenes, Cicero, Chatham and Clay. 

Massachusetts has had one unadulterated heroic age, commencing with the dawn 
of the troubles of the colonies with the mother country and coming down to the 
adoption of the Federal Constitution. During that eventful period there is no stain 
upon her escutcheon. She was about to act a first and principal part with the other 
colonies in a great political drama, involving not only the destiny of them all, and 
of a continent, but which was to influence materially the woof and color of the 
world's after-history. In mind, enlarged views, and wise statesmanship; in a just 
and true appreciation of her rights and duties, and those of the other colonies; in 
courage, fortitude, wisdom, disinterestedness, and moral principle, she was \ip to the 
great occasion. She was in singleness possessed of and inspired by true, noble, 
unselfish, and patriotic purposes, and throughout all the perils and (rials of that 
momentous time Massachusetts showed no weakness, but always strength and great- 
ness. She made no mistakes, she committed no crimes, no excesses. Her people 
had the good sense to call for the counsel and guidance of her wise, virtuous, and 
great men, and the fruits were for the colonies nationality and independence, and 
for herself one of the purest and brightest chapters in history. 

The shock of England's of^pressive policy for the colonies first struck Massachu- 
setts. She at once invoked the aid of the southern colonies, and it was rendered 
not" only without hesitation, but with heartiness for a common cause. They knew 
that one fate awaited them all. In the imperishable language of Mr. Webster, 
" Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand to hand they stood 
around the Administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them 
for support." Purified by the bloody ordeal of the long war, and instructed by the 



39 

t 

inefficiency of the Articles of Confederation in peace, the Constitution was the pro- 
duet of all the lessons of their experience, of their concessions, and of their har- 
monized counsels. It was the consunrtnation of all their work, the perfection of 
man's statesmanship. If it were possible for the people of the United States to 
uphold, to guard, and defend it in the same spirit in whieli it was formed it would 
be perpetual; the degi-ee of its security will always be proportioned to the preva- 
lence of that spirit. 

But after a time Massachusetts swung away from the great political principles 
%nd ends to which she had so steadily adhered for more than ;i generation. She 
has since been working with all her characteristic activity, energy, and audacity for 
the overthrow of that wonderful fabric of government in the building up of which 
she bore so conspicuous a part. She has kept up an incessant attack upon all its 
compromises txcept those which redound to her own advantage. She lias repudi- 
ated all her able and enlightened national men, with their broad and statesmanlike 
views of Constitution, laws, and policy; she has surrendered to sectionalists, radi- 
cals, and fac'iiinists, to knaves and demagogues, to factitious philanthropists and 
clerical politiciEns and hypocrites, to meniiof one idea, and fatally bent on carrying 
that out, though Constitution and liberty thereby perish, to mannikina in intellect 
and soul, who are wholly incapable of her wise and good government, or any just 
appreciation of ker relations, duties, and obligations both to tlie United States and 
the other States. She has permitted men, who can ruin but not rule, to make her 
one of the piiiiei:(al architects of the great national ills that are upon us.^ 

She oDce gnrnei for herself and the whole country a great crop of imperishable 
glory ; but she is tow working as efBuiently as the southern rfbels for its degrada- 
tion and ruin. When she shall have returned to her old political moorings, to the 
principles and spiiit that ruled her when the foundations of our government were 
laid, and shall have thrown from herself the perverted and deformed dwarfs that 
now beset hn- like a legion of horrible incubuses, and have called back into her 
service herj|l)ie, patriotic, ar\d virtuous statesmen, the work of reunion and recon- 
struction T^l be speedily consummated. For that mighty work then, indeed, would 
I'lassachusettf be potential. 



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